


Not skin deep, you're in my soul

by screamer



Category: CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Abuse, Alpha Jensen, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Jared Padalecki, Hurt Jensen Ackles, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Language, M/M, Omega Jared, Self-Lubrication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:13:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamer/pseuds/screamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mated Omegas bond with their Alpha on a biological level, so completely that their body resists sexual advances from anyone else. Repeated knotting can make an Omega’s body accept a new Alpha, but the new mating bond overwrites the old one, erasing it not just from an Omega’s body, but from their mind as well. </p><p>Jared wakes with a headache and a memory full of holes. He’s been kidnaped, drugged, and is about to be sold to the highest bidder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a spnkink_meme prompt. Chapters to be posted as I write them.
> 
> Comments, reviews, and questions are adored.

IT'S stifling hot, the air heavy with the smell of rotting wood and mildew. There’s a constant sound, repetitive and steady as the pulse of a heart, and at first Jared thinks it’s just the blood rushing through his throbbing head. Things are moving, too, so maybe that’s what it is. He needs to have . . . he needs . . .

Whatever is that Jared needs, it’s important, but his head is a hundred pounds of metal splinters, and his limbs wont move, and nothing makes sense. After a while he hears whimpering, realizes it’s him, and his muzzy mind is so detached from his physical reaction, he’s actually embarrassed for himself.

If only . . . could see him now. Who could see him now? Jared feels a spike of panic in his chest. Something is very, very wrong. 

Something besides the obvious, because feeling is starting to return to Jared’s extremities and a general prickling is solidifying into distinct points of pressure: his wrists, his ankles. 

Jared cracks one eye open, sees cheap linoleum and the legs of a chair in dim light. He’s hearing better now, and the pulsing, liquid noise isn’t his brain running out his ears. It’s the sound of water against the side of a boat, a noise Jared would usually find soothing, but he can’t think of any reason he would be on a boat, even less with his hands tied together at the wrist and his mouth thick and cottony as he works his dry throat in a swallow. 

The floor under Jared shudders with approaching footsteps. They thud to a stop, stirring stale air against Jared’s face.

“Yeah, he’s waking up,” a husky male voice says from directly overhead. It’s not a voice Jared recognizes. 

Joints crack and something large moves close to Jared’s head. “Wake up, puppy. You’re not gonna want to sleep through this.” Jared doesn’t move, keeps his eyes closed as large hands work his feet loose, roll him over and haul him up by his elbows. 

His head throbs and Jared can’t help gasping at the sharp pain. The air that hits his throat is heavy with the scent of Alpaha – more than one, and Jared’s whole body seizes up at the immediate threat.

“This is the fist day of the rest of your life,” the Alpha who’s holding him says as he half drags Jared forward, forcing him to stumble on numb legs. Jared squints his eyes open, sees he’s being hauled towards a low doorway, another man standing to one side watching him with a smirk. Jared’s senses tell him he’s another Alpha.

“Watch your head,” the man who’s grip is tight on Jared’s arms says just as Jared’s head bounces off the doorjamb. The man laughs, delighted. 

“Don’t fuck him up, dumbass,” the other one says. 

They emerge in a narrow hall bathed in saffron light and smelling strongly of sweat and Alpha pheromones. There’s another smell under it, one that sets all of Jared’s senses abuzz and makes his skin itch. There are new noises; a low murmur under a sharp, electric voice speaking in bursts. 

“Be a good boy now, and you might get someone nice,” the Alpha says, and they are in front of another door, this one much taller, sturdier. The second Alpha throws it open and Jared is shoved through. 

He’s immediately blinded by light and sound and smell – so much smell. He wants to clamp his hands over his face and curls up in fetal position. He falls limp, trying to get away, hide, and the man holding him curses. 

Someone else grabs his other arm, and then there are hands all over him. They strip off his clothes, cold air bringing goose bumps to overly sensitive skin. Jared feels fevered, thinks he must be sick, more than just a killer migraine. 

He expects his hands to be freed, but the next thing that happens is he is forced face down over something hard and straps are being tightened around his legs, his neck, holding him in place. The smell that’s been making Jared jumpy is suddenly right there in his face, heavy and sweet and nauseating. Omega. Fear. Blood.

He blinks his eyes open, adjusting to the light now with his face turned down and away. It’s white-bright all around him, feels hot on his skin like a studio lamp. He’s tied down, legs spread, arms bound. He’s been strapped to a breeding bench. 

No. Nonononono! Everything is wrong, oh, god someone help him, he can’t remember, he must have been drugged. He’s been drugged, and kidnapped, and now he is going to be raped. 

A sob works up Jared’s throat, and it isn’t pained confusion, but pure terror. He has all too firm a grasp of his immediate situation. 

The amped voice of an auctioneer is starting its prattle over the murmur of a restless crowd. Jared watches his tears and snot drip down to grow a damp spot on the scuffed stage floor. His head’s a mess, panic and drugs choking off useful thought. He keeps coming back to something that is missing, something that leaves a horrible tightness in his chest. He’s on a loop - help me, help me, help me, but he has no idea who he’s begging for help. 

“And sold to number 54! You can claim your purchase at any time. Don’t go away gents, we still have a whole roomful of beautiful little Omegas . . .”

The platform Jared’s on shakes as something heavy lands on it. He’s tied in a such a away he can’t twist to see who’s approaching, but even the sickening smells left by the other Omegas who used this bench can’t cover the sharp scent of Alpha arousal. 

Jared sobs and gasps, every muscle in his body straining against his bindings. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want this, someone help!

“No, no please don’t, don’t – don’t!” Jared screams, the noise ripping from his throat. The auctioneer doesn’t even pause in his prattle but there are a few shouts from the crowd. A hand falls to Jared’s bare back, rough fingertips smoothing down over his ass. 

“You’re not going anywhere, so you might as well relax,” the Alpha says. Incongruously, it’s a nice voice, soft and mellow. He sounds young. Jared isn’t foolish enough to think that will in any way help his situation.

There’s the sound of a zipper being lowered, a grunt. “Next time I’m gonna do this with you face up. Wanna see what you look like when I fuck my knot into you,” the Alpha says.

Jared’s body has been taken over by a bone-deep tremble, every muscle locked tight, straining against leather straps. His throat has closed, he feels like he drowning. No sound, no air. 

A rough hand grabs one side of Jared’s ass, pulling to exposed his hole, clenched tight against intrusion. His body knows this is wrong, every cell working to prevent what is about to happen.

A finger, then two, pokes experimentally at his opening, followed by a hard thrust that turns into horrible, tearing pressure as the fingers force their way inside. “Fuck, that’s unreal,” the Alpha says. 

Jared has heard about this – everyone knows that kidnappings and forced matings occur. In some countries, it’s almost considered as good as a marriage. Omegas, even ones as tall and strong as Jared, disappear, and the unlucky ones reappear mated to a new Alpha, wiped clean of their previous mate on a cellular level.

The fingers in his ass are withdrawn and replaced with heavy, slick cock head. A horrible ragged sound forces its way from Jared’s throat, and he realizes what that ache in his chest it. It’s his mate. His mate whose face he can’t picture, whose name he can’t remember.

It’s his mate who is now a stranger, and for whose help every particle of his body has been crying.

It’s grief as much as pain that fills Jared’s throat with a scream as the Alpha who has just bought him starts forcing his cock inside. There’s nothing to ease the way, till the slick of blood starts tricking hot down Jared’s thighs. His rapist is cursing in what sounds like genuine pain, Jared’s hole so tight it can’t be pleasurable. 

Hands grip too tight at his hips once the Alpha is sheathed inside Jared. He rocks forward, trying to thrust into muscles working to close him out, and the pain lances through Jared’s gut. He screams and then immediately gags. His body rebels against the abuse and Jared heaves vomit onto the floor.

Behind him the Alpha growls, “you filthy slut. Take it, take it all,” and shoots his load deep inside Jared’s body. 

Something explodes behind Jared’s eyes, a pop of white pain. Then black.

**  
_\- Jensen -_  
**

 

“How the fuck do you accidentally leave someone alone? Especially an Omega, and in a strange city. You stupid shit, when I get my hands on you I’m going to –”

“Jensen,” Chris says, and Jensen realizes he is standing in front of two police officers, screaming death threats into the phone. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. This isn’t helping Jared. He needs to keep a clear mind and find his mate, now. He can murder Chad later. 

Very calmly he ends the call, cutting off Chad’s tinny protests. 

Then he turns and lobs the phone at the wall, shattering it in a spray of plastic pieces.

“Fuck!” Chris shouts. “What the hell? That was my phone.”

“I know,” Jensen says without any compunction. 

“Can we continue?” the female Alpha officer asks, her face stoic. 

Jensen pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache building. “Yes. Go ahead.”

“Your mate –” 

“Jared,” Jensen interjects. 

“Jared. He’s the third Omega to be reported missing in two weeks. We already have people on the case, we suspect the kidnappings are connected, based on location and victim profile.” The officer hands Jensen two missing persons flyers. The pictures – one male, one female – show good looking twenty-somethings 

“They both disappeared from locations on club row, same as Jared.”

“What was Jared doing there?” Chris butts in.

“He was with Chad,” Jensen says through his teeth.

The female officer nods. “As Mr. Murray stated in his report yesterday, he left Jared outside a bar calling for a cab at approximately 1:30 Saturday morning, while Mr. Murray accompanied a . . .” The officer looks at the typed sheets in her hand. “A Miss Carrie Lawrence to her apartment, where he spent the night.” The officer glanced at Jensen, then back to Chris. “Mr. Murray didn’t realized Jared was missing until one o’clock Saturday afternoon, when he got back home and Jared wasn’t there.”

Jensen has already heard the basics, but hearing it again is just fuel for the fire. “Should never have fucking trusted that little fucker with my husband.” Jared needed new friends if this is how they treated him, ditching him at random bars to go home with random sluts when Jared had been nice enough to come visit Chad in his time of post-breakup distress. 

That is one friendship dead and buried – possibly literally, if Jensen gets the chance.

“Jensen, focus,” Chris says, and Jensen barely curbs the harsh retort that immediately leaps to mind. Chris is here to help him, help Jared. 

Jensen turns back to the two police officers. “What else? Can we talk to the detectives on the case?”

“I’m sure they will want to speak to you both. Right now they are out, so I’m going to give you,” she leans across her silent partner to grab a card off the desk, “Detective Wilson’s card, and this is Detective Kelsey’s number on the back.” She writes on the card with a red pen before handing it to Jensen. “We already have your number, but if you think of anything else that might help, give one of them a call.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Chris nods, getting a nod in return, and Jensen a sympathetic smile. 

They leave, getting a few odd looks, probably from the screaming and phone throwing. Outside it’s still early morning, the sun laying long shadows over dew-wet grass. Chris is driving and as they head back to their hotel Jensen watches the neighborhoods pass. There are joggers and dog walkers and people mowing their yards. 

It’s all wrong. The reality of the situation hits him again, full force, like it has been doing anytime Jensen slows down enough to let it. Jared is in the hands of a kidnapper, and no matter what they want him for, it’s not good. But the possibility that it’s an Alpha who right now could be . . .

No. Fuck, no. He isn’t going to think about it. He’s not going to spend the time giving himself panic attacks and having Chris slap him around to snap him out of it. 

“Turn here,” Jensen tell Chris. His friend raises one eyebrow. He obviously knows they are heading to club row, but he does as Jensen says and doesn’t point how interfering with a police investigation is a bad idea. Chris is Jared’s friend in his own right, but even if he wasn’t, he’d understand. Jared is Jensen’s world, there is nothing without him.

**  
_\- Jared -_  
**

 

Someone is singing to him, and Jared doesn’t want to wake up. The song is soft, accompanied by the strumming of an acoustic guitar. It starts and stop, as if the singer is playing absentmindedly. It’s soothing, wrapping Jared’s mind like a soft blanket, keeping all the sharp things away. 

He knows he’s dreaming, and so close to the edge of waking that his brain is already receiving pain signals loud and clear. Everything hurts, his whole body throbs, sharper pain just under the surface, waiting to flair up the second he moves.

Somewhere nearby, a door slams and footsteps echo on hardwood, then shuffle on carpet. Jared feels the presence enter the room, knows the smell. It’s familiar, makes something inside him want to cower, maybe show his belly, expose his neck. Another part of Jared snarls and lashes out at the thought, hates the submissive side that wants to lie still and do nothing.

Jared’s body is telling him the man whose presence is lurking in the doorway, watching, is his Alpha. Jared’s mind - his soul - rebels. Whoever his Alpha is, it isn’t this man.

It’s only a matter of time and sex before even that part of Jared gives up on his former mate. Already the place in his mind that should be filled with memories and feelings it a total blank.

“You awake in there?” the Alpha says. “I’m kinda getting tired of fucking an unconscious body. Somnophilia isn’t my thing. All that time marinated in my spunk means your just about ready to be untied though, yeah?” 

There’s the rustle of clothing being removed, the soft thump of it hitting carpeted floor. Jared opens his eyes to a cream colored ceiling. The sheets he’s lying spreadeagle on are dark blue and smell of sweat and blood and sex. 

Jared cuts his eyes down for his first look at his Alpha (No! Not his Alpha!). 

The man’s young, probably mid thirties at the oldest, long, fair hair tied back in a ponytail. He’s completely naked, his cock half hard. He meets Jared’s eyes with a smirk. “See something you like?”

Bile surges up Jared’s throat and he wrenches his gaze away before he’s sick, swallowing hard to avoid choking on his own vomit. 

The bed shakes as the Alpha climbs up, positioning himself over Jared. Jared keeps his head turned. 

“Look at me,” his Alpha says. Fuck, not his Alpha! 

Jared obeys anyway. The Alpha’s eyes are brown. Jared smells coffee, Irish, on the man’s breath. 

“My name’s Logan. You can call me that or Alpha. And from now on, your name is Steve. Got it?”

“My name’s Jared,” Jared says in a hoarse whisper, the best his voice can do. His throat is raw with screaming. 

Alpha Logan clamps a hand down on Jared’s throat, digging his fingers in till Jared’s gasping. “Your name is Steve.” 

He releases the pressure just enough for Jared to get a breath. “Tell me your name, Omega.”

“Steve,” Jared rasps. “My name is Steve, Alpha.”

“Good boy,” the Alpha approves. He shuffles back on his knees, grabs Jared’s spread legs, lifts them as he settles his crotch against Jared’s ass. 

“I can’t wait till you start getting wet for me. Your first heat is going to be so fucking good.” Alpha Logan strokes his cock to full hardness, a little smile on his lips. 

Jared looks anywhere but at his Alpha. His mind is going crazy, but his body is settled in complete stillness, willing to let this happen. He’s a mess of pain, and he knows this is going to hurt him even worse, but the feel of Logan’s hands on his thighs feels right. And Jared hates it, hates it so much, but it’s the first real, solid thing he’s experienced in as long as he can remember. 

There’s the snap of a bottle cap and a wet sound as the Alpha rubs lube over his cock. There’s no fight left in Jared, and he whimpers in honest pain, not protest, when Logan hauls him up by the hips, positioning Jared so he can guide himself in. 

“Damn, you’re a mess,” he says. He’s forcing his way inside Jared with sharp, shallow thrusts. Each one sends a frisson of pain through Jared’s body. He’s torn up inside, maybe even more than can heal properly. Maybe he will die tied to this bed, his Alpha raping him over, and over again. 

The thought is almost a relief. Jared is sure he doesn’t want to come out the other side of this.

The Alpha grips Jared’s behind the knees and grunts as he shoves in hard. Jared can’t keep back his harsh sobs as he feels the cock filling his body, all wrong, so right, and more pain than Jared thinks he’s ever had to endure. 

The Alpha falls forward, catching himself on his elbows to hover over Jared. “Say my name.” 

The end of his ponytail brushes across Jared’s neck and Jared shudders and sobs and wants to die. 

“Logan,” Jared whispers. “Alpha.”

**  
_\- Jensen -_  
**

 

Jensen and Chris leave the tramp ship at a dead run, the rise and fall of sirens sounding in the distance. Chris yanks open the driver’s door of his pickup, already throwing the truck in gear when Jensen tumbles into the passengers side. 

Chris doesn’t turn on the headlight till they are back on a main street, well away from the scene of their latest crime. 

“That was way too fucking close,” Chris says. 

Jensen shrugs. “We got what we needed.”

“Plus a little therapy for you.”

Jensen doesn’t look up from the carbon copies he’s flipping through. “I didn’t kill him.”

“You were going to.”

Jensen swallows a rush of undirected rage. It’s happening more and more often, the longer he’s without Jared. It’s been six days now, and the police haven’t done shit, which only further validates Jensen’s decision to find Jared on his own. 

“Yeah, I was going to. That piece of shit sold my husband like an animal, sold him to some fuck who’s . . .”

Jensen takes a deep breath, holds it. He’s shaking, and it isn’t from lack of sleep or excessive caffeine consumption. 

“We’re gonna find him, Jen. Okay? I’m gonna help you find him. But when we do, you’re gonna have to live with all this.” Chris doesn’t sound upset, just tired. “I just don’t want you to do something you’re gonna regret, later.”

“The only thing I’d regret is losing Jared.” And Jensen knows it’s the absolute truth. 

Chris sighs. “What do we have?”

“The name’s no good, but he paid with a card, so somewhere there’s an account that has to be legit. It’s a start.”

“You’re scarily good at this. If your technique was more brains and less brawn, I might suggest you look into a career change.”

Jensen gives a harsh laugh. “The police don’t have my motivation.”

Chris’ smirk fades. “True enough.”

**  
_\- Jared -_  
**

 

Tuesday is the first day Alpha Logan leaves Jared home alone. He untied Jared yesterday morning and told him he was free to go anywhere inside the house. Jared used his newfound freedom to wobble his way to bathroom, where he barely stood long enough to relive himself and wash his hands and face. He caught a glimpse of his pale skin and hollow cheeks in the mirror and couldn’t remember what he had looked like before all this, before the boat and Logan.

After his trip to the bathroom, he returned to bed to sit amongst the rumbled bedclothes and stare as his hands. There was nothing else he could think of that he wanted to do, so he sat and tried not to think.

Logan calls him Steve, and it is unnerving how easily Jared became accustomed to answering to it. Even now that the drug has worn off and his mild concussion has healed, Jared’s head feels strange and unpredictable. The possibility that he might forget his real name entirely terrifies him, and he repeats it over and over to himself. Jared. Jared . . . something. There had been a last name there, presumably his mate’s late name. It is gone now. But he still has his first name, and he clings to it.

“Get out of bed.” 

Alpha Logan is standing in the bathroom doorway, naked and wreathed in steam, drying his hair with a towel. He walks to his closet and starts pulling on clothes.

Jared obediently shuffles out from under the sheets and puts his feet on the floor, bracing himself to stand. He is still in considerable pain, nothing being given opportunity to heal with the constant abuse, but his body has fully accepted Logan as his Alpha and Jared’s own traitorous biology begs him not to fight it.

“As much as I like you spread out all day ready for me, you’re fucking useless like that.” Logan turns around, dressed in causal wear. Jared doesn’t know what he does for a living, and his thoughts stop there, devoid of any curiosity. 

“Take a shower, clean up the house. Wash those sheets.” 

“Yes, Alpha,” Jared acknowledges. 

Logan grabs his wallet and keys of the dresser top. “Don’t try to leave. The doors and windows will be armed, so stay away unless you want a nasty shock.” He crowds into Jared’s space, catches Jared’s chin, roughly pulling his head up. “Show me what a good Omega you can be.” 

Jared stands beside the bed, unmoving, long after he hears the door slam, the chirp of the system arming, the roar of a V8 fading into the distance. 

The sun has shifted its warm golden stripes across the carpet when Jared pads out to explore the rest of the house. It’s a modest two story with a modern interior, hardwood floors and tall, arched windows covered in cream drapes. From the bedroom window Jared had only seen trees, and as he stands in the kitchen, facing the brick accent, bare feet cold on bare floors, he doesn’t hear traffic or neighborhood sounds. The house must be somewhat secluded. 

“I don’t belong here,” he says to the empty kitchen and the humming refrigerator.

Even now a part of Jared, the part that wakes from hectic confusing dreams where someone’s voice calls him by his real name, the part that shivers deep in his belly each time Logan touches him – that part pokes at the edges, gathering information, whispering about plans.

But Jared doesn’t make plans, the thoughts just rattle around in the back of his head. He doesn’t like Logan, but he is bound to him. Logan is Alpha. 

So he goes back upstairs, showers, and strips the bed. He stands naked in the dim laundry room as the washer revolves, and realizes he has no clothes, no personal belongings of any kind.

He drinks some grapefruit juice, but doesn’t eat. He finds locked drawers, but no knives. When the sun slants around the far side of the house and the temperature drops, he pulls a blue throw off the back of the couch and wraps up. He doesn’t mean to sleep – it seems all he does is sleep – but the next thing he knows is the slam of the front door the familiar sound of Alpha Logan’s footsteps. 

“Steve!” 

Jared flinches, struggles to untangle himself from the blanket and sit up. Logan thud down the three steps to the den.

He frowns when he sees Jared. “God, are you always this lazy?”

Jared stands, taking the blanket with him, but Logan yanks it away. He grips Jared’s arm and pulls him against his body, grabbing a handful of hair and tilting Jared’s head. 

“You can’t be like this when we have pups around,” Alpha Logan says, and bites Jared’s neck, too hard for foreplay. “Kids take a lot of work, you can’t be slacking off.”

Jared’s whole body flinches, an involuntary start of surprise. He hasn’t considered the future any further out than a few hours. His aching, feverish body, and a mind full of gaping, ragged holes make the task obsolete – if Jared dies, he will go willingly. All other possibilities have yet to be considered. 

Certainly not pups. The thought makes him ill, his empty stomach clenching and lurching. 

“No,” Jared says, and he’s almost surprised to hear the word out loud. 

Logan’s hands tighten, twisting Jared’s head further, throwing him off balance. Even without that, his balance has been fucked for a while now, pain and a constant low grade fever turning his legs wobbly and weak.

“What’s that’s, Steve?” Logan purrs.

Jared looks his Alpha in the eyes. “No, that isn’t happening. I would never give you kids.” 

Logan yanks Jared’s head sharply to the side, toppling him to the floor, half leaning against the couch. “Like you have a say in it, Omega.”

Jared’s knees are digging into the carpet. Logan’s hand is on the back of his head, shoving him forward, smashing his face into the couch. 

“If I want you to have my kids, you’ll have them.” There’s the sound a zipper being lowered and the weight on Jared’s head increases. He yelps, reaching up to claw at the hand gripping his hair. 

Logan leans into the hand holding Jared’s head down, using his knees to shove Jared’s legs wide. “I’m your Alpha now, bitch, and you’ll do as I say.” 

There are a few nudges of wet cock head against Jared’s sore hole before Alpha Logan thrusts in. The pain is instant and nausea floods Jared’s jut. He can only breathe in shallow, leather scented breaths. Any movement he makes feels likely to break his neck. 

A few days ago Jared might have cried and screamed, begged his Alpha to stop, to slow down, but he has learned it only makes Logan rougher. 

Now Jared lies still and swallows down hot stomach acid in so he can keep breathing.

Logan shoves his swelling knot past Jared’s rim, immediately pulling back, yanking hard when it catches. Jared yells as it tears free, the noise weak and breathless with his neck twisted and face half-smothered. 

Behind him Logan pants and grunts and the weight on Jared’s head disappears. Jared lies still and shivers as his Alpha shoots ropes of hot come over Jared’s head and back. 

He stays there when Logan gets up and leaves the den. He stays there when the TV goes on upstairs. The warm lines of liquid rolling down his thighs are probably blood, will certainly stain the carpet, but Jared doesn’t move. If he’s lucky, he wont ever have to move again. 

**  
_\- Jensen -_  
**

 

“If this is the wrong place I will kill you when I get back.”

Chad was obviously eating when he called Jensen, and there is a long moment of what sounds like cereal crunching before he replies, mouth still full. “It’s the right guy, I promise.”

The fact that Chad is even able to eat while Jared is still god-knows-where makes Jensen angry. His willingness to commit illegal acts in order to facilitate Jared’s rescue doesn’t make up for his earlier stupidity. Jensen knows he is never going to be able to forgive Chad, but right now everything felt like a fresh wound, and even Chris is grating on Jensen’s nerves. It’s a good thing they didn’t allow Chad to ride along like he wanted, Jensen would be hard pressed not to smash his face in. 

“He house has a security system.”

Jensen snorts. “Like that makes any difference.”

“Okay, then.”

Chad obviously doesn’t get that Jensen’s plan is not about sneaking in. He wants the sick bastard to be there, because he needs to end this. He will get Jared back, and he will kill the Alpha that stole his mate. 

“Well, call me if you need any more info, I can –”

Jensen ends the call in the middle of Chad’s cereal crunching sentence. Chris keeps his eyes on the road, but he’s obviously been listening.

“How much further?” Jensen asks, ignoring his friend’s tense jaw.

“Might as well try and get some sleep, it’ll be a while,” Chris says.

The address Chad gave them, the one he dug up after hacking into the account Jensen got from the sack of shit who runs the Omega auctions off his tramp boat, is all the way in New Jersey. Apparently bidders drive a long way to whatever port the auction is taking place in. 

Jensen isn’t sure how they get the Omegas they sell, men and women that are kidnaped from all over the country. Something about the kidnappers taking a cut of the sale price. By that time the man’s mouth had been dribbling globs of bloody saliva, and missing a few teeth, but Jensen’s head hadn’t been very clear either. From the moment the man confirmed Jared’s sale to an Alpha, Jensen was planning to kill him. The only thing that had stopped him was Chris.

The tramp ship is a great lead for the police, but a dark void in Jensen’s chest is telling him it’s probably too late. Some Omegas don’t survive the change of Alphas, and even of those who do, and then by some miracle are rescued, there’s the possibility they wont be able to bond a second time with their former mate. 

Even worse, some don’t want to. 

Jensen has had days for the realization to settle in: by now, Jared wont know him. Jensen is a stranger; someone tore him from Jared’s mind. 

The thought fills Jensen with a rage that paints everything in red. He doesn’t realize he’s making any noise until Chris says his name, loud and sharp, breaking in on the rising growl vibrating through Jensen’s chest. He uncurls his fingers and takes a deep breath. The air inside the car smells like fear and failure. 

“Drive faster,” Jensen says. 

**  
_\- Jared -_  
**

 

The night Logan rapes him in the den, Jared’s fever spikes. Sounds and light bend into impossible shapes, and Jared can’t seem to shut up, keeps mumbling nonsense, his voice working of its own volition. 

Alpha Logan had finds him on the floor by the couch, and after deciding that a few slaps to the face isn’t going to fix this, carries Jared upstairs. Hours or minutes later, he comes back and makes Jared swallow pills.

“I paid way too much for you to have you die now. Drink.” 

Jared tries to decide which of the three glasses that appear in front of his face is real. When his wandering hand grasps at air, his Alpha holds his head and the glass both. After, he lets Jared lie down.

“ ‘S jus like ‘fore,” Jared slurs. “B’ you’re no’ him.” He doesn’t even know what he’s saying, but it makes Logan stand and stare at him till Jared’s eyes slide shut into sleep.

When Jared wakes it’s afternoon, his fever is down, and his left wrist is handcuffed to the bedpost. Alpha Logan gives him more antibiotics, orders him to drink all the water, and then leaves him alone. Jared lays and stares at the cuff restraining him, and it’s a while before his thoughts line up enough to wonder if this is how things will be from here on out.

Jared can’t really muster the energy to care. He sleeps. 

He wakes and it’s midday again. There is a glass of juice and more pills on the bedside table, but his bladder is full and aching and he’s still handcuffed to the bed. He lies still and listens, but the house is silent, so he swallows the pills dry, closes his eyes and waits.

Jared doesn’t want to fall asleep and end up pissing himself, though he knows it’s slightly absurd considering he spent the better part of a week covered in blood and semen. His body is no longer under his control, everything about it is strange and unpredictable, and the idea that even his basic bodily functions happen apart from his will is subtly terrifying. 

But Jared’s useless body is not only unpredictable, but also weak. He falls asleep despite the insistent burn of his bladder and only wakes hours later, jerking to full alert from deep, thick, murky dreams. 

His whole body is thrumming with alarm, and Jared’s not sure if it’s residual emotion from his dream, or something that woke him. He lies frozen in the grey evening light, straining his ears to catch any sound. 

Downstairs, glass shatters, sharp and bright, and a male voice says something, tone frustrated, words indistinguishable. 

Jared is cold and then hot all over, a buzzing in his ears. That voice isn’t Alpha Logan.

More glass shatters and Jared realizes someone is clearing glass out of a window frame. 

Someone, a male someone, broke a window, and they are coming through it. 

Jared scrambles up on the bed, vision fuzzing out with the sudden movement. He pushes himself against the headboard, straining to catch more sounds, and suddenly realizes, he’s hoping Alpha Logan gets here in time to save him.

Jared comes out of his panic to find he’s panting for breath. He leans against the bedpost, shaking like he just survived a narrow escape. His head is so screwed up. Why does he want Logan? Why is he feeling threatened instead of relieved? He’s handcuffed to a bed in the home of his rapist. Someone breaking in is a good thing.

“Jared,” he whispers, just to hear the name out loud. “Jared, not Steve.” 

He’s Jared and he used to have a last name. 

“Jared!”

The shout makes him jerk in reaction, yanking his cuffed arm hard enough for the metal to bruise. Heavy footsteps are moving through the rooms below.

“Up here,” a male voice says, and there are boots thumping up the stairs. More than one pair. 

Jared freezes, eyes locked on the open bedroom door. He should feel relief. Someone has been looking for him, and they are about to find him.

He doesn’t feel anything at all. 

A door down the hall opens as the footsteps pause and shuffle, and then they are right at the bedroom, and two men step into the doorway. 

Alphas, their movements guarded, hesitant.

And Jared knows one of them.

“Chris!” Jared all but sobs, relief a sudden, warm flood that fills his throat with tears.

Chris stares at Jared with wide eyes, but it’s the tall one, the one who smells like anger and fear, the one Jared doesn’t know at all, who starts forward, moving like he’s going to grab Jared. 

Still held in place by the handcuffs, Jared can’t move far. He ducks his head and curls away, anticipating unwanted contact. 

“Jensen,” Chris says, sharp. There’s a grunt and boots scuffle over the wood floor. Jared risks a glance up and sees Chris holding back the strange Alpha with some effort. 

“W’ the fuck?” the Alpha says, twisting out of Chris’ hold, still straining towards Jared.

“He doesn’t know you!” Chris shouts, and he’s forcing his body between Jared and the other Alpha, shoving hard. 

But he doesn’t have to, because the other Alpha stumbles back, eyes wide, panting like he’s just taken a serious blow.

Every muscle in Jared’s body is pulled so tight, he’s trembling, but he hardly knows what for. Something hot and heavy has settled in his gut, a low wail building in his chest, fighting for room with the relief he feels at seeing Chris. 

Something’s very wrong, but Jared’s poor fucked up head can’t seem to piece it all together. And absurdly, his overly-full bladder decides just then is time to remind him he seriously needs to piss.

Jared licks his dry lips and rattles the handcuff. “Chris?” he rasps, and Chris flinches and turns. The strange Alpha is leaning against the far wall, watching Jared with the kind of expression someone might have looking at their dead child. Jared cuts his gaze down and away, avoiding.

“Fuck, sorry, Jared,” Chris says. He’s beside him in two strides, fingers gentle on Jared’s chained wrist. “Is there a key?”

“L-Logan has is,” Jared forces out. It’s an effort to say the name.

Across the room, the strange Alpha makes an odd sound, a kind of retching sob. Jared carefully keeps his head turned away, focuses on Chris.

Chris is cursing, hands searching through his pockets. He turns to the other Alpha. “Jensen, you got something to pop these open?”

Jared doesn’t look but he hears the shaky exhale, the rustle of clothing, the scuff of boots on hardwood. “Yeah, uh . . .”

The sound of something heavy hitting the floor makes Jared look up and the strange Alpha - Jensen- is pulling the wire off the back of one of the creepy abstracts decorating the bedroom. 

“Here.” The Alpha moves forward, offering the length of wire to Chris, but his eyes are glued to Jared. His expression is awful, devastated, and it makes Jared want to hide himself. It’s too much emotion, too much he doesn’t understand, and it’s making him sick with unease. 

Chris takes the wire and the other Alpha backs up a few steps. Jared notices the slight tremors running through the Alpha’s arms, making his hands shake till he curls them into fists. 

“Chris,” he says, like a plea. 

“Yeah,” Chris says, kneeling as he works the lock on the cuffs. They snap open and Jared pulls his hand to his chest, cradling his bruised wrist.

“I need to . . . bathroom,” he says, fumbling with the sheets for modesty. Everything is too close, too much, and he feels smothered, has to breathe harder, focus to pull air into his lungs. 

Jared slides off the bed, taking the sheet with him, moving to avoid Chris’ hesitant offer of help. He closes and locks the bathroom door behind himself, stumbles to the toilet. He can here Chris and the other Alpha pacing the bedroom, footsteps and low voices a murmur over the sound of an endless stream of piss hitting the water. 

When he’s done, Jared leans against the wall and breathes against the sticky panic in his lungs.

Outside the bathroom door it’s quiet. Then a soft knock. “Jared? You okay in there?” Chris. 

“I’m fine. Just a second,” Jared says. He swallows hard, a heavy lump in his chest, a weight in his lungs. He can’t go back out there with that strange Alpha and his weird intense gaze and bleeding emotions. Just the thought is making Jared shake with tension. 

“Jared!”

It’s the other Alpha’s voice, and something inside Jared twists and cracks. The panic in his chest is drowned in a wave of desolation he can taste, bitter like green apples, sharp like cold iron and nothing. 

He can’t fight the sudden emotion, doesn’t even try to, just sinks to the floor as heavy, wet sobs tear through him, coming from deep inside so his stomach muscles spasm with each one. There’s a hole in his chest, in his mind, gaping and endless and it hurts, it hurts like nothing he’s ever felt before. 

He’s so lost in his misery he doesn’t pay attention to the raised voices outside, or the silence after that, or the sound of the bathroom lock being picked and the door opening. 

Chris is there, his hand warm on Jared’s back. 

“Hey, man, hey. What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Jared, talk to me.”

Jared sobs, gulps, almost gags. He can’t see through the tears, can hardly breathe. “Something’s missing,” he whispers.

“Oh, fuck,” Chris says.

He pulls at Jared, trying to get him to his feet. “Come on, lets get you dressed. We’ll get you out of here, get you to a doc. Everything’s going to be fine.”

The bedroom is empty, but the other Alpha’s sharp, unhappy scent lingers. Chris sits Jared down on the end of the bed while he rummages through Logan’s closet, making an unnecessary mess. He grimaces as he hands sweats and a tee-shirt to Jared. “Sorry, but we need to get going, and it’s too cold to run around butt naked.”

Jared’s been so caught up in his landslide of emotions, he’s totally forgotten about his Alpha. 

“We’re leaving?” he asks, sniffling through the snot and tears in his throat and nose. The question is rhetorical, it’s obvious Chris is there to take him away, but Jared’s bruised mind can’t seem to hold onto any thought for very long. He isn’t sure how he feels about leaving, but the Omega biology that tells him Logan is his Alpha is now simply silent. He wont leave on his own, but if Chris takes him away, he wont object. 

“Yeah, we’re leaving,” Chris says, his voice hard, almost a growl. 

Jared doesn’t say anything else, but dresses without help, sniffling and hiccuping till Chris hands him a bunch of tissues without comment. 

In the wake of his breakdown Jared just wants to curl up and sleep, shutdown for a while and not think, but Chris is guiding him out of the room and down the stairs. 

The dining room window is smashed, glass carpeting the floor. Oddly, there are also two fist-sized dents in the wall, paint and drywall crumbling out. Chris steers Jared clear of it and into the foyer where the strange Alpha is pacing, arms folded, fingers tapping impatiently. His knuckles are bruised, scraped and bleeding. He looks up sharply when Jared and Chris approach, leaf-green eyes searching Jared’s face. 

Jared ducks his head, looks down at his bare feet. He wishes the man would stop watching him. The intensity of his gaze is almost painful, makes Jared’s guts twists and his chest ache.

“What happened?” The Alpha’s voice is hoarse, like he’s been screaming. 

“It’s fine. Lets just get him to the hospital,” Chris says.

“That’s not fucking fine, Chris!”

Jared starts trembling, and Chris’ hand tightens on his arm, gently pulling him toward the front door. “Well you sure as hell aren’t helping.” 

There’s stunned silence from the strange Alpha as Chris yanks open the front door and ushers Jared through. 

Outside it’s midday and overcast. A cool breeze smelling of rain ruffles Jared’s hair and brings goose bumps to his skin. It seems like another lifetime since he was outside, and it’s unsettling how new it all is. 

There’s a truck parked at an angle in the driveway, front wheels resting on the lawn, like someone was trying to drive right up to the porch. The grass is cool and prickly against Jared’s bare feet as Chris leads him to the rear passenger door, opens it for him, practically lifts him in before Jared gets with it and scrambles up on his own, clumsy and stiff. 

Chris closes the door behind him, and Jared is alone in a truck smelling of Chris and strange Alpha, coffee, leather and sweat. He shivers and turns to watch Chris and the other Alpha, now standing face to face. Neither look happy. 

It’s the first time the man with the green eyes hasn’t been looking at Jared, finally giving Jared the chance to study him. There’s an odd little twist of unhappiness in Jared’s gut as he takes in the short hair, strong jaw, full lips. He’s a good looking guy, but all Jared can think is that looking at him makes Jared feel shaky and lost, so he looks away, fighting the tremor in his hands and the tears building up in his throat. It’s good Chris is taking him to a hospital because as much as the thought of new people makes him panicky, he is aware he’s seriously messed up. Bonding with Logan broke something in him, and it’s like Jared is bleeding out everywhere. 

“ . . . so why the hell is he wearing . . . reeks like that shit hole . . .”

It’s the Alpha’s voice, raised to a hoarse shout. His conversation with Chris has become heated, a few words breaking through the distance and closed truck.

“You have to hold it together for . . .” Chris’ words fade out as his voice lowers. He’s trying to keep the conversation calm.

“I swore I was going to kill that sick bastard, and that’s what I’m going to do!” the Alpha yells.

“Your husband needs you right now, you stupid fuck!”

Something in Jared’s wounded mind is trying to come together, and he fights actively to keep the pieces apart. 

“No,” he whispers, trying to ignore what he already knows, simple logic convincing him of what Chris has just confirmed.

The conversation outside the truck has gone too quite for Jared to hear. He doesn’t care. He curls up on the leather seat and rocks slowly back and forth, trying to find a dark, blank place to settle his thoughts. He can’t deal with it right now, can’t bear to look at the truth. The Alpha who is a complete stranger to Jared, who looks at him like a Jared’s a piece of his soul, is . . .

If that man hadn’t been with Chris, Jared would never have looked at him twice. He’s a total unknown. An unknown that sets Jared on edge in a way he can’t describe. 

It’s all so much worse than he’d thought. And suddenly, the unbidden feeling comes, a sharp desire for Logan. 

It’s so awful and perverse, and horrifically sincere that Jared grips his head and wails in misery. 

Jared thought he’d wanted to die before, but it had been a dull acceptance, a willingness to let it all slip away. Now it’s a sharp and immediate need, scissors to cut the string, end the reality that bleeds black and putrid through Jared's mind.


	2. Chapter 2

JENSEN feels like he’s coming apart at the seams, perpetual motion the only thing keeping all the pieces together. They’ve been at the hospital for hours, and instead of being with Jared, Jensen is stuck pacing the waiting room, harassing the nurses, and talking to the police. 

The police are no help. They spoke with Jensen, then Chris, asked to talk to Jared and were immediately denied. 

They tell Jensen they’ve identified the Alpha who was holding Jared and have put out an APB. Presumably they’ll get in touch with the detectives working the case in the city Jared disappeared, but, as one of the officers admitted to Jensen, these kinds of cases rarely end in sentencing. 

Without the victim’s testimony, the physical evidence is near useless. No Omega is going to testify against their Alpha, and no matter what the evidence says, if both Alpha and Omega claim everything that happened was consensual, the prosecution is left arguing biology in an attempt to prove that no Omega would cheat on their mate, let alone runaway with another Alpha. 

The 0.5% cases where an Omega has willingly broken their mating bond to be with someone other than their Alpha work against the evidence.

The paperwork from the tramp ship claims the exchange of money was sale of dry goods. The perpetrators know if they keep their mouths shut, they have a good chance of walking. 

No one close to Jensen has ever been directly affected by a forced mating. Outside of political discussions over a few beers with friends, it floated on the peripheral of Jensen’s life. Statistic are abstract. 

Statistics don't say how terrifying it is to look into the eyes of someone you’ve known and loved for years, and see no recognition, only fear. When he saw Jared in that bedroom, Jensen’s first instinct was to touch him, grab him and hold him. Protect him. 

But he couldn’t do that. He had to stand and watch Jared, somehow different and smelling wrong, looking wrong, acting wrong. More than once he’d been seconds away from leaving Jared with Chris and going to hunt down the dead man who’d done this. 

Then Jared had gone into some kind of fit in the backseat of the truck, screaming and trashing before going catatonic. Chris sat with Jared, keeping him on his side, while Jensen drove, looking in the mirror to check Jared as much as he was watching the road. 

As bad as seeing Jared like that had been, being separated from him now was almost worse. 

The police have left, there’s been a shift change among the hospital staff, and Jensen thinks it’s about time again he tried to talk, force, or threaten his way in to see Jared. He just needs a minute, so he can see with his own two eyes that Jared’s alive and okay.

He turns to head down the hall, and Chris is there. He looks like shit, now that Jensen takes the time to notice. 

“Jared?”

Chris has been back and forth between Jared and Jensen, each time saying Jared’s all right, but not talking, and they are still working on him. What he doesn’t say, but Jensen knows, is that Jared doesn’t want Jensen anywhere near him.

Chris sighs. “Doc’s coming out to talk to you.”

Fucking finally. “How’s Jared?”

Chris drops heavily into a chair. “They got him moved into a room. He’s okay, sleeping I think. You can see him after this.”

“Does he . . . is he . . .” Jensen isn’t sure what he wants to ask. Is he still Jared? Is he afraid of me? There are a dozen other questions, dark and rage filled ones, that Jensen wont let surface. 

“Mr. Ackles? I’m Jared’s doctor, Dr. Teller.”

Jensen turns toward a tall man with a deeply lined face and a head of iron-grey curls. 

Behind him, Chris stands. “I’m going to get a coffee.” 

Jensen nods automatically, doesn’t really notice Chris leave. 

Dr. Teller attempts a smile. “Let’s talk in my office.”

Teller closes the door and waits for Jensen to sit before taking the chair across, rather than behind the desk. 

“Tell me about Jared."

Dr. Teller tries another weak smile. “Physically, Jared should make a full recovery. Aside from the rectal tearing, most of his injuries are superficial. We did have to put some sutures in –”

“Stop!” Jensen says. He feels slightly nauseous, saliva flooding his mouth like he’s on the verge of heaving up everything that’s not in his stomach, all over the doctor’s white tennis shoes. He doesn’t want to hear about that, doesn’t want to picture torn flesh and red blood, and . . .

Sudden vertigo has his vision greying out. The doctor takes him by the shoulders, tilting him forward, pushing his head between his knees. 

Things come back into focus, and Jensen struggles up, shaking off the hands and panting out, “I’m fine, lemme go.”

Dr. Teller is frowning at him. “When’s the last time you ate?”

Jensen can’t remember, but he has no appetite whatsoever. He shrugs, swallows. “I’m fine, I just . . . can I see Jared now?”

Dr. Teller sighs. “I think we need to talk about a few things first. But, while you eat something or I’ll be forced to put you in a bed too.” He gets up and goes to the desk, picks up the phone and has a brief conversation with someone before he hangs up and returns to his chair. 

Jensen runs a shaking hand through his hair and avoids meeting the doctor’s eyes. 

“Jared is going to be fine.” Teller pauses, the silence heavy. 

Then, “Am I correct in assuming you plan to try and bond again?”

Jensen blinks, looks up. He hadn’t thought about it, not in any clear, direct way. All of his attention had been on getting Jared back, making sure he was safe. 

“Yeah, I think. . .why?” Unease stirs in Jensen’s gut. “Is there something wrong? Is Jared . . . does Jared not want to? Is that what he’s saying?” No. No, that can’t be it.

Dr. Teller shakes his head. “Jared hasn’t said much of anything. But Mr. Ackles, you should be aware of the risks.”

“What risks,” Jensen snaps.

“Re-mating is very damaging for an Omega. Beyond the obvious physical affects, the possible consequences include memory loss extending beyond mate recognition, neurological disorders, split personalities, suicidal tendencies and psychosis, to name a few.

Teller’s voice goes very gentle, like he’s talking to a child. “That risk increases with each new bonding, and research does indicate the risk is significantly higher when attempting to establish a mating bond between two persons who have been previously mated.”

Jensen is shaking by the time Dr. Teller shuts up. He’s bitten the inside of his mouth so hard, he’s swallowing blood. “So what are you saying, I shouldn’t try to get my husband back?” Jensen says, mouth clumsy. He can feel the blood coating his teeth. 

Dr. Teller looks at Jensen with sad hound dog eyes. “For my professional recommendation, I must advise against it.”

Jensen snorts, wipes his mouth, looks away. 

“However,” Teller says, standing and moving slowly to his desk, “if you were a friend coming to me for advice, I’d suggest you talk to Dr. Banner.” He turns, card in hand, extended in offer. “This is her field of expertise and she’s the best at what she does.”

There’s a knock on the door, and Teller calls, “Come!” A nurse in pink scrubs fumbles it open, balancing a wrapped sandwich on top of a venti Starbucks cup. 

“Thanks, Lilly,” Dr. Teller says, nodding towards Jensen. 

Lilly looks him in the eyes as she hands over the food and coffee, and Jensen can practically feel the sympathy bleeding off her. She obviously knows why he’s here. 

“Careful, it’s extra hot,” she says as Jensen takes a drink of the coffee. It scorches his tongue, but it’s good. 

“Thanks,” he croaks, and she smiles again before leaving, closing the door behind herself. 

Dr. Teller is still holding the card, watching Jensen. Jensen reaches for it, Teller meeting him halfway. 

It’s plain white cardstock with raised silver letters. Just a name, phone number and email address. Jensen tucks it in his jacket pocket. 

“Can I see Jared now?”

Teller nods, straightens, points to the sandwich left forgotten on the low table between the chairs. “Take that and eat it while you sit with him. He’s still asleep, probably will be for a while.”

Jensen’s head is too heavy with unwanted thoughts to do anything but comply. One of the nurses escorts him to Jared’s room when it’s obvious directions are beyond Jensen’s current capabilities. 

Chris is there, half a cup of hospital coffee cradled in his hands as he sits by Jared’s bed, watching. Jared’s asleep, and he looks peaceful, face smooth, lips parted in slow even breathes. If it wasn’t for the split lip and bruising along one temple, running down over the cheekbone, Jensen might be able to believe nothing was wrong. 

But Jared’s in a hospital bed, with IV lines running from one arm, an oximeter on his finger, his cheeks too hollow, his skin too pale. 

Chris looks up. “Hey.”

Jensen nods, his throat tight. 

Chris stands. “I’m gonna go get a place to crash, get some sleep. You should too, after you’ve sat with him a bit.”

Jensen shakes his head, and Chris just grimaces, grips Jensen’s shoulder. “I'll be back in a few hours,” he says, and leaves the room. 

Jensen walks slowly to the bed and sits. He sets the sandwich and coffee on the floor, reaches out and takes Jared’s free hand. The skin is warm and dry, Jared’s nails ragged and broken, like he’s been using them to pry at something. 

“Jared,” Jensen says. “I got you back.” The words don’t ring true. 

“Are you gonna wake up?” Jensen whispers. Please wake up. 

The cardiac monitor runs in silent lines, up and down. Jensen strokes his thumb over Jared’s wrist, feeling the pulse there. “It’s okay now, you’re safe, so I guess you can sleep. I’m gonna be right here, so you just get some rest. I’ll be here.” 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying till the tears start dripping off his chin and jaw. He wipes his face with the back of his hand, focuses where Jared’s dark hair curls around the hinge of his jaw. The skin there is smooth and unmarred. 

Jensen doesn’t look away for a long time.

**  
_\- Jared -_  
**

 

Jared wakes confused in that simple, hazy way of someone who has all the time they need to find themselves. It takes him a good five minutes of slow, drifting thought to parse out his situation, his mind crawling back over the sharp memories. 

He’s in a hospital bed. There is no window in the room, but the lights are on low. A man is sleeping in a chair beside Jared’s bed, head tilted back in a way that will leave him with a sore neck, his mouth half open. 

Jared studies him for a long moment. Chris used his name, but Jared can’t remember it. What he does remember is Chris calling Jared this man’s husband. 

This man used to be his mate, and that’s why Jared doesn’t know him. 

Jared’s eyes roam over the man in the chair, circle the bland room back to the sleeping Alpha. There’s no panic, no horror. He feels blank, empty, like none of this is really happening to him.

He doesn’t even feel Logan’s absence as more than a simple acknowledgment. 

A time of intermittent drowsing and waking passes for Jared till the Alpha twitches and comes awake with a groan, dropping forward to grip his neck with both hands. He raises his head, squinting blearily. 

“Jare?” he croaks. 

Jared isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he says nothing. The expression on the Alpha’s face is so openly relived, he almost looks like he’s going to cry. 

“Oh, god,” the Alpha says, hiding his face behind his hands, his breath sharp and fast. After a moment he straightens, looks at Jared more calmly. 

“How’re you feeling?”

Jared doesn’t feel anything. Nothing has any importance. Importance is just a word. 

So he says, “Water?” His voice is strange and rough, and Jared’s not even sure it comes from him at all. 

The Alpha is already standing, eager to accommodate. “Yeah, okay. I’m gonna get that, and a nurse. I think they want to, uh, see that you’re okay . . .”

Jared watches the Alpha leave before letting his eyes slide close. Voices and hands wake him to some imitation of consciousness. 

The Alpha is back, standing at the foot of Jared’s bed, his eyebrows furrowed, worry and confusion in every line of his face. There is a man dressed like a doctor and a woman in blue scrubs, their hands on Jared, wrapping a BP cuff around his arm, asking him questions. 

Jared lets the answering words slip out, easy as wet spaghetti off a fork. 

And what a strange analogy that is. When was the last time Jared even ate spaghetti? 

Time moves in liquid form. The doctor talks to the Alpha. Then Chris is back. He brings clothes. He offers to help Jared dress, throwing an odd look at the other Alpha who stands to one side, constantly hovering, looking unhappy. 

Jared dresses himself. Every joint is stiff and indifferent to holding weight, but there was no pain. 

There is sitting and waiting, paper and talking. Jared follows Chris outside into a cold evening, damp with rain. The strange Alpha shrugs out of his leather jacket and hesitates for just a moment before he carefully settles it around Jared’s shoulders.

“We’ll get you a jacket before we leave. Wear this for now,” he says. 

It’s warm with body heat, heavy with familiar scents. Jared slips his arms into the sleeves, hunches into the secondhand embrace is offers. “I’m sorry, I forgot your name,” he says, suddenly needing a name to put to this face that wont stop watching him. 

The Alpha looks a little sick, for a moment, then says, “Jensen. It’s Jensen,” his voice thick. 

Jared nods. That fits. Alpha Jensen. 

The thought sends a twinge through his chest and he blurts out, “Where’s Logan?”

Both Chris and Jensen stop moving. They stare at Jared, Chris looks pained, Jensen horrified.

Jared’s gaze skitters over both and lands on the wet pavement beneath his feet. He’s wearing the grey and green converse Chris brought, and they fit perfectly. Does Chris know him that well, or did Jensen tell him? 

“I don’t want to know,” Jared says to the immediate silence and muted sounds of traffic. “I don’t know why I asked.”

“Fuck,” Jensen whispers, and he sounds like maybe he’s crying, or angry, has his teeth clenched. 

“It’s okay, Jared,” Chris says, but he doesn’t answers Jared’s question. Jared tries not to care. Things are feeling more real than he wants them to, so he pulls the empty up around his mind like a blanket in a dark room. 

“Okay,” Jared says. 

No one says anything else as they get in Chris’ truck and leave the hospital parking structure. Jared wonders if they are going straight home, realizes he doesn’t even know where they are. 

He leans forward. “Um, where are we?”

Alpha Jensen jerks, like Jared’s voice startled him. He fidgets and says, “New Jersey. Do you . . . you remember being with Chad in Florida?”

Jared sits back. “Yeah.”

Alpha Jensen nods like that’s what he wanted to hear, but all he says is, “We’re going straight home.”

They don’t go straight home, though. They stop at a strip mall and Chris stays with Jared while Jensen leaves and comes back with bottled water, energy drinks, Tylenol, a fleece blanket folded into its packaging, and a hooded sweatshirt for Jared. 

He passes the sweatshirt and blanket back to Jared. “Try and catch some sleep,” Jensen says. 

Jared isn’t tired though. “You want your jacket back?” he asks, because he’s hoping Jensen doesn’t. It’s comforting for no reason Jared can explain. 

“No, you can keep it,” Jensen says quickly.

Jared leans against the window and closes his eyes as they leave behind buildings and streets, turn onto the highway. He feels Alpha Jensen’s eyes on him for miles. 

They drive straight through the night. Jared wakes to someone’s hand on his leg. He jerks away before he realizes it’s Alpha Jensen. Might have anyway, but Jensen looks upset when he hands Jared a bottle of water and pills in a prescription bottle cap. Outside the window, lit streets of an unfamiliar town slide past.

Jared slept with Logan on his mind, in his head, and now he’s thinking of handcuffs and orange juice, wondering how much Logan paid for him. 

“It’s pain meds and antibiotics. You need them,” Jensen says to the hum of the truck. He doesn’t do anything else, but waits till Jared accepts the pills and water and then holds them for a good fifteen minutes before deciding to take them. He’s feeling worse than when he went to sleep, his various injuries making themselves known in dull throbs and sharp spikes of pain.

“You hungry?” Jensen asks, like he’s just looking for something to say, trying to get Jared to talk. 

Jared shakes his head, hands back the water and bottle cap, and lies down again. 

The next time he wakes the sky outside the window is pale with dawn, and Jensen is driving, Chris asleep against the passenger side window. 

By the time it’s light enough to see, Jared recognizes the country around them, knows where they are. It’s a few hours outside of Madison, and suddenly, he’s homesick. 

He sits up, stiff and sluggish, and Jensen looks up, watching him in the rearview mirror. 

“How’re you feeling?” It’s cautious. Everything Jensen says sounds like he want to add something, but doesn’t.

“ ‘m okay,” Jared mumbles. Then, “Who’s watching the dogs?”

Jensen looks back to the road. “Danny and Clare have them.”

Jared’s neighbors. Apparently, Jensen’s neighbors too. Jared tries to fit that into what he knows, but there’s a thick blanket of uncertainly overlaying his memories. He’d always taken memories for granted, was untroubled when something slipped his mind or wasn’t accurate in his recollection. It happened. He’d never been afraid to recall something, never felt sick unease that everything he knew was wrong. 

Jared turns away, watches the scenery flip past outside the window, and the conversation is over. 

Chris wakes up as they enter Madison. Jensen drives them straight to Jared’s house - it’s the only way he can think of it, and the idea that the ghost of Jensen lingers in his kitchen, has brushed its teeth at Jared’s bathroom sink sends long shivers over Jared’s skin. 

It’s bright and sunny when they pull into the driveway. Everything looks the same, and somehow that surprises Jared. 

Chris and Jensen both get out, stretching and yawning. Jared follows slowly. 

“You coming in?” Jensen asks Chris. 

“Nah, I should get home.” Chris turns to Jared, and for a moment he looks like he’s going to shake Jared’s hand or something, but then he grabs a handful of Jared’s (Jensen’s) jacket, pulls him into a fierce hug. 

“So fucking glad you’re back, man,” he says. 

Jared hugs back, for once feeling okay with the physical contact. 

Jensen hands Chris the truck keys, and Chris grips his hand, hugs him too. Jensen makes an odd face, gives a stilted laugh. “Just mail me the bill,” he says. 

Chris opens the drivers door and climbs in. “Asshole,” he says affectionately.

Jared avoids Jensen’s gaze, instead watching till Chris’ truck is out of sight. He bites his lip hard when Alpha Logan’s voice and face drift through his mind. He doesn’t like being alone with Jensen, but he doesn’t want to be with Logan either. Except that he does. 

“Can we get the dogs?” Jared says into the heavy silence. 

“Yeah, sure,” Jensen says. “Let me . . .” He gestures to the duffle he’s holding, then starts towards the garage door, pulling keys from his pocket. 

Seeing his dogs eases a tight knot of tension in Jared’s chest. He can ignore Jensen’s constant gaze, the sympathetic curiosity radiating off Clare as she hands him the dog’s leashes. The animals are exuberant in their affection, uncaring of why he was gone, simply happy he is back. Jared fusses over them, gets them inside, fills their water bowls. It burns away a good twenty minutes while Jensen hangs like an unnatural shadow. 

Jared wanders into the living room, the dogs at his heels. Everything looks the same as he remembers, and he drops to the couch, relieved till Jensen comes to stand in the doorway, carrying a tray. 

“That time again,” he says, after a moment, and comes to set the tray on the coffee table next to Jared. There’s a bowl of soup, the pills loose beside it. 

“You’re not, uh, suppose to take those things on an empty stomach,” Jensen says to Jared’s questioning look. 

Jared isn’t hungry, but his stomach has the nauseous ache of being empty for too long. He manages four bites, takes the pills with half a glass of water, and lays back down.

He’s home now, things can be okay.

**  
_\- Jensen -_  
**

 

Jared’s like a zombie. After they leave the hospital he starts talking, to Jensen’s immense relief, but he’s still so expressionless, so quiet, Jensen wonders if the drugs are stronger than he thought. 

He makes sure Jared takes them anyway. At least now his husband lets him near, doesn’t cringe unless Jensen touches him, even wears Jensen’s jacket the whole way home, unaffected by the scent of a strange Alpha. 

And that thought makes Jensen’s gut twist with rage he can’t express. Killing Logan Kilpatrick probably wouldn’t make him any less angry, but the simple fact that he hasn’t torn the sack of shit into pieces is a source of anger all its own. 

He knows he wont, though. Not as long as Jared is letting Jensen take care of him. 

Jared falls asleep mid morning, both the dogs settling down with him. Jensen waits till he’s sure Jared’s under, then comes to stand in the doorway, watching his husband sleep. He can tell it makes Jared nervous, his constant habit of watching, but he can’t keep his eyes away. 

That last phone call between him and Jared had been the most normal thing. Trivialities and banter, each pretending they didn’t miss the other. And then the next day it was Chad on the phone, telling Jensen he’s at the police station, because Jared is missing. 

Jared is sleeping soundly, thanks to the pain meds, and Jensen leaves reluctantly, goes upstairs to get the guest room ready. It’s obvious Jared isn’t going to be sleeping with him, so he swallows down a tangled mess of hurt and anger, and pulls out sheets and pillows because Jared isn’t the one to blame for all this, he shouldn’t have to suffer even a second more of discomfort. 

Having Jared this close, looking past Jensen like he’s a intruder in his own home, is going to drive Jensen crazy. The card Dr. Teller gave him is lying on his dresser, underneath his phone. He knows he’s going to call the number, sooner than later, but he still has Teller’s calm, concerned voice in his head, words like psychosis and neurological damage filling his lungs and compressing his heart. 

So Jensen makes the bed. He moves some of Jared’s clothes to guest room. He brews coffee, and puts off making that call. 

Subconsciously, he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It happens the second night Jared is back, comes in the form of a violent nightmare that jerks Jensen awake and upright in his bed.

The screams aren’t in his dreams, though, and he’s tumbling out of bed, running down the hall to the guest room before he can even form a coherent thought.

Jared’s twisted in his sheets, arching against the bed. His screams sound like a tortured animal, and they trigger something feral and untouched in Jensen. He’s rougher than he means to be when he hauls Jared up, shaking him awake.

“Jared! Jared, wake up!” Jared’s screams are ricocheting in Jensen’s head, and he needs them to stop.

Jared thrashes, wails, chokes. His hands latch on to Jensen’s forearms, and he’s trembling so hard, for a moment Jensen fears he’s having a seizure.

Then Jared is shoving at him, struggling to get away.

Jensen’s first instinct is to hold on, pull Jared close to his chest, sooth him with hands and voice. But his husband’s struggles are frantic, fueled by genuine terror, and Jensen stumbles back off the bed, palms help out in a non-threatening gesture.

“Fine, it’s fine. Jared, it’s fine, just calm down.”

Jared is sliding away, towards the edge of the bed, still making a whining, gasping sound.

“Jared,” Jensen says again, just to catch his attention, make him look up, make him stop moving. Make him acknowledge Jensen.

“Logan?” Jared gasps. 

Jensen can’t move. For the first time in his life, he wants to hit Jared, just smash his face in, shove that name right back down his throat. 

And it’s so fucking wrong, such an awful thought, it makes Jensen sick. 

He turns and stumbles out of the bedroom, bounces off the opposite wall, breaks into a run down the hall. If he doesn’t get away from Jared right this moment, he’s going to explode. 

Inside the master suite, Jensen closes the door. He’s panting like a dying animal, his eyes are burning with tears. He doesn’t even know if it’s anger or pain or disgust at himself. 

He should have killed Logan. He should have torn his fucking head off, right in front of Jared, shown him . . . shown him . . .

There are photographs on the bookshelf, pictures of him and Jared at a bar with friends, by the lake, surrounded by trees in Autumn colors. Jared’s smiling, leaning into Jensen with comfortable affection. It’s a person Jensen doesn’t have anymore. 

With one lunge he’s sweeping everything off the top of the shelf, shattering the glass frames against the wall. He yanks out books, Jared’s paperback mysteries and historical non-fiction. He grabs the whole shelf and shoves it crashing to the floor. 

Jensen comes back to himself standing in the bathroom, in front of the spider-webbed and blood-smeared mirror. His right hand is throbbing and his throat is raw. 

He stands there, panting, shaking and disoriented, not sure what just happened. He winces as he steps through shards of glass, carefully making his way back into the bedroom.

The room is dim, lit only by outside lights, but it is easy to see the entire area has been trashed, pictures torn off walls, drawers yanked out of dressers, even the mattress pulled off the bed. 

Jensen stands, staring. The time between the overturning the book shelf and coming-to in front of the mirror is a complete blank. 

Jensen shudders out a breath, alarm blooming cold in his gut. This is definitely not something that has happened before. It’s like he went berserk. What did –

Jared. 

Fear lodges like a rock in Jensen’s throat and he runs to the door, bloody fingers slipping over the knob. 

All he can think about as he runs down the hall is that split-second where he was so damn close to hitting Jared. 

But the guest room is intact, the only thing out of place are the sheets and blankets Jared kicked off the bed. 

Jensen’s shaking with relief - thank god, thank god, he didn’t hurt Jared - as he moves through the rest of the house. He’s on the downstairs landing when he hears the dogs whining in the den. 

The lights are still off, but Jensen can see the dark outline of Jared curled up on the couch with both his dogs. He doesn’t move to acknowledge Jensen standing in the doorway. The dogs whine and shift, uncomfortable with the tension they can sense.

“Jared?” Jensen tries. Nothing.

“I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

The dark bulk that is Jared shifts, maybe in a nod. Jensen can’t tell, but he takes it as a positive and moves into the room. He stops short of the couch, sits on the coffee table a few feet away.

He’s working out what to say when Jared speaks, his voice rough. 

“You can send me back.”

Jensen’s not an angry person, as a general rule, and he almost never loses his temper with Jared. When they do have an argument, it’s more likely Jared is the one who will both start and finish it. 

The quicksilver anger that spikes at Jared’s words is not something Jensen knows, but it fits him like a glove, and that scares him. He has to breathe out hard before he can ask, “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Jared whispers. “I’m sorry, you can send me back.”

Jensen realizes what his husband is saying, and he lunges to his feet, looms over Jared. 

“Shut up! You say shit like that again and I’ll – ”

You’ll what, Jensen? What will you do? His mind boils up with stark, lurid pictures.

Jensen barely makes it to the kitchen in time to vomit half digested maccaroni into the trash can. He stays there for a long bout of dry heaves, then staggers to the sink and rinses out his mouth. 

He walks back upstairs, sifts through the wreckage of the bedroom till he finds Dr. Banner’s card. He sits down on the tilted mattress and dials the number.

**  
_\- Jensen -_  
**

 

Jared spends the night on the couch with his dogs. 

Everything is quiet upstairs, and after an hour Jared can relax his tense muscles, but he doesn’t stop listening, awake and wary till grey light lines the curtains. 

When it’s midmorning and Alpha Jensen still hasn’t come downstairs, Jared gets up and feeds the dogs. 

There’s a note on the refrigerator.

_Jared’s appt, 2:30, Dr. Tolbert_

Jensen hadn’t mentioned anything about an appointment. The thought of leaving the house ties Jared’s stomach in knots. For a second he considers taking the note down, throwing it away. He doesn’t need to see a doctor, he’s perfectly fine. He doesn’t need anyone asking more questions, doing the same examinations over, and over again. Touching him, looking at him.

Jared’s mouth tastes like metal and his vision greys out at the edges. He collapses into a crouch, then curls over his folded legs to rest his forehead against the tile floor. 

He closes his eyes and shivers, waiting for the dizzy sickness to pass. The last thing he needs now is to pass out on the kitchen floor. He really would end up the hospital, then. Logan wouldn’t like that.

It takes a moment for Jared to realize he’s just put Logan in the place of Jensen. 

Hot panic washes over him and he scrambles back through his thoughts, following the thread back as far as he can. 

How long has he been doing that? Was he doing it last night? Is that what set Jensen off? 

Jared can’t remember. 

Fuck, fuck. He can’t fucking remember!

Jared jumps when one of the dogs licks his hand, pushing for attention. The house is quiet, just the hum of the refrigerator and birds outside.

It reminds Jared of another kitchen, in another house. He stumbles upright and retreats to the den, back onto the couch. 

It’s afternoon when Jensen comes downstairs. He’s unshaven, and his hair is a mess, but he’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He lingers in the doorway, looking at Jared with red-rimmed eyes.

Jared can’t hold Alpha Jensen’s gaze. The man’s face carries the rage and violence of last night like a battle field. Jared watches his own restless finger. Whatever happens now, he feels he isn’t going to like it. 

“I’m sorry,” Alpha Jensen says. He’s almost too quiet for Jared to hear. 

“I’m so sorry. Last night . . . I . . . I didn’t . . .” Jensen chokes up and stops. 

Jared keeps his eyes on his twisted fingers, and waits. 

“I talked with someone who specializes in this kind of . . . stuff.” Jared catches Jensen’s vague hand motion out of the corner of his eye.

“She’s a doctor in Seattle. She knows what’s wrong. She wants to talk to you - to us.”

Seattle means hours in the car. People and places Jared doesn’t know. 

“Jared?”

Hours locked in the car with Jensen.

“Seattle’s . . .”

“We’re not going . . . no, Dr. Banner has patients all over the country. It’s pretty specialized, what she does. For now she’s willing to video chat with us.”

Jared nods, eyes locked on his clenched fists tucked between his knees. 

Jensen runs his hand over his hair, down his neck. “We need this. It’s not safe . . . Dr. Banner says it might not be safe.”

Jared tries to puzzle out what Jensen is talking about. “What isn’t safe?”

“Us. Me. Being like this, it’s messing with my head. I’m not . . .”

Jared waits.

Jensen sighs. “I think it’s better if she explains it all to you.”

Jared nods. All right. Sure. He can do that. If that’s what they need. 

“Did you take your meds?”

Jared looks at the edges of Jensen. His folded arms, his mussed hair, his bare feet. 

“No, I guess I didn’t.”

Jensen makes a noise Jared can’t decipher. “Jared . . . Never mind, I’ll get them.”

The pressure on Jared’s lungs eases up when Jensen is out of sight. He listens to the sounds in the kitchen and hopes Jensen forgets about that note.

He’s home now, things should be okay.

**  
_\- Jensen -_  
**

 

Even with the time difference, Jensen is surprised he was able to get Melissa Banner on the phone at midnight. 

Or, he is now. At the time, he was half out of his mind with panic.

Jensen never had a reason to wonder about the aftermath of a forced mating, consider the actions of those affected. Calling at odd hours, in a panic, seems to be a common one. Dr. Melissa Banner was prepared for it. 

Sitting in the dark, trying not to hyperventilate, Jensen tells her everything. Jared’s first reactions, his current behavior, and Jensen’s violent, uncontrollable reactions. 

“It’s called Barclay syndrome,” Dr. Banner says. “Not a lot of people have heard of it. I see it in about eighty-five percent of couples suffering a broken mating, but is has been known to occur in other situations.”

“Does it go away? If I just ride this out, does it stop?”

Dr. Banner sighs. “No. Barclay syndrome mimics old pack rule. When an Alpha takes over another pack he either claims the old Alpha’s Omegas as his own, or he kills them.”

Jensen’s bones feel like jelly. He’s been alone with Jared for two days. Anything could have happened. 

“This is a time sensitive issue, Jensen,” Banner says. “The aggression and possessiveness you’re feeling, that need to re-establish your bond with Jared, that’s your body’s way of trying to set things right. The longer you put it off, the stronger the urges. You reach a certain point without a successful mating, and the focus shifts from mating to eliminating the Omega. The time frame is different for everyone, but from what you’ve told me, I’d say you are almost to the transition.”

A sharp pulse of pain is settling in behind Jensen’s eyes, and he still wants to touch Jared. Caress him, own him, break him. 

He should get away, put miles between him and Jared.

Dr. Banner’s voice is a studied calm. “There’s a good chance Jared would go back to his kidnapper. It’s the only mating bond he recognizes now.”

Jensen has a solution for that, too. For weeks already he’s planned how he would hunt Logan, trap him, kill him. Then Jared would be free, and Jensen would be . . .

Even the prospect of killing Logan doesn’t numb that deep, aching horror at the idea of never having Jared again. 

For hours after the call ends Jensen stays exactly as he is, sitting in the dark, cell phone in his hands. 

No. He needs Jared. Re-bonding will work. It will stop the syndrome. It will keep Jared safe. If they do it before Jensen turns killer-crazy, nothing bad will happen. 

And Jensen will have his husband back.


	3. Chapter 3

NO ONE talks about what happens after the rescue. The days, and weeks, and years that follow, what they build up to. 

The majority of doctors wont deal with Barclay syndrome, or any of the other disorders connected to broken matings. Even when you find a doctor who will, most medical insurance won’t cover anything but the physical injuries sustained in a forced mating.

After he stands watch over Jared to see him drink half a fruit smoothie and swallow his medications, Jensen sets his laptop up in the dining room. For the next hour he alternates between reading and watching Jared, still on the couch with the dogs. Jared isn’t sleeping but he doesn’t move, never once looks towards the dining room. 

Page after page of hypotheses and conflicting opinions, a clinical analysis of murder and insanity. Jensen’s stomach feels raw, bleeding. It’s already three p.m. when he remembers Jared’s doctors appointment. He slams his laptop shut and curses, loud in the silence. Over on the couch, Jared jerks his head up. 

Jensen stumbles up from his chair, every bone in his body under a crushing pressure that wants to vent in blood and violence. It wants to finish everything that hangs half-alive, waiting. 

He doesn’t look at Jared – Jared, who is watching him now. 

Jensen grabs a half a pack of Marlboros and a lighter from the drawer nearest the glass deck doors. Outside in the cool, watery sunlight, he chain smokes through the rest of the pack like he hasn’t in years. Not since Jared. 

Before Jared, Jensen smoked daily, drank hard on weekends, drove without a seatbelt. Normal stuff you couldn’t even really call risky. But after mating, after marriage, it was more than just himself living a life he never paid a thing for. It changed everything in ways Jensen couldn’t even have anticipated. Lung cancer and traffic accidents were risks Jensen wasn’t willing to take anymore. Still, in the end, his downfall was something he hadn’t even taken seriously enough to protect against. 

What the fuck was he thinking to let Jared go off alone like that? 

The cigarette in Jensen’s hand snaps, showering ashes over his skin. He’s shaking from the build of emotion, and he locks it all down as hard and fast as he can. Not now. Not now. No time for this shit. 

Five minutes to four, Jensen goes back inside, washes his hands, collects his laptop from the dining table. 

Jared is exactly where he was an hour ago. Big fucking surprise. 

“Jare, Dr. Banner said she’d meet with us at four. You okay with that?” Jensen makes sure his voice is calm, caring. “It’s just video chat, but if –”

“I can do it. It’s fine.” Jared sits up slowly, pushing tousled hair away from his face.

Well, that one step, anyway.

Yeah, like a fucking game. Collect all five and win. 

Jared’s watching him, eyes cautious, hands braced on the couch cushions as if he’s about to stand, and Jensen swallows hard, turns away, focuses on logging on to Skype. This isn’t him thinking - feeling - this shit. Jensen wont let it be him.

**  
_\- Jared-_  
**

 

Jared watches Jensen setting up the laptop, and he prepares answers to questions he hasn’t yet been asked, planning a normalized account for Dr. Banner. 

Jensen talked to this doctor, Jensen trusts this doctor. He seems to think Dr. Banner will fix things. Whatever they discussed, Jensen is in favor of it. 

And Logan wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t want Jared trusting another Alpha, especially not –

Jared cuts that thought off, the splintered pieces piercing through. _Especially not your former mate. Not Jensen. Not him. Because you know what he wants._

There is always Logan, inside Jared’s head, and it’s exhausting fighting for one thing when the other takes no effort, slips right in and settles close and natural as his own skin. 

He’s incomplete and his body, his mind, is trying to put itself back together. But those hole are shaped like pain and lust, and they say Logan, Alpha, so Jared fights it. 

Fortunately for him, it turns out Jared doesn’t need his lies. 

Dr. Melissa Banner looks no older than Jensen – caramel skin, caramel hair, green, green eyes – but she has a degree for psychiatry from Boston university dated ‘93 hanging on her wall. Jared can read every line of fine type in the high-def camera. He reads each ten times. 

Jensen keeps moving, adjusting his position on the couch, darting glances at Jared, but Dr. Banner doesn’t seem to mind. She looks calm and comfortable, casual. She asks Jared questions, and when he pauses too long, looking for the right lie he doesn’t have prepared, she just moves on. Doesn’t make him say the words that his mouth wont form.

When she asks about waking up on the boat, Jared’s throat seizes up. He can talk about this, but what is there to say?

“I didn’t remember anything.” I didn’t remember Jensen. Not even his name.

Dr. Banner hears what he doesn’t say. “You woke up and couldn’t remember Jensen, right from the start?” 

Jared studies the umbrella tree framed in the corner of the laptop screen. Shame grips his chest, pressing on his lungs. “Everything was. . . things were messed up.” 

Jensen is looking at him again, and two people watching feels like a crowd, even when one isn’t physically present.

Dr. Banner doesn’t leave this one alone though. “You were drugged with something called the break-up drug. It’s made by organic synthesis . . .” Dr. Banner glances between Jared and Jensen. “Basically, it mimics the components in Alpha sperm that trigger a new bond. Ten cc gives the affect of a broken mating for up to twenty hours, but because there is no genetic marker, it doesn’t work to actually break the bond. So if you never caught a memory, your kidnapper may have continued using it those first few days.”

Jared nods. He doesn’t know what else to do with that information. 

Jensen is practically vibrating next to Jared. “What about long term affect? Is this shit going to mess him up more than –”

“No, nothing like that.”

Jared lets his attention slip away. He’s already messed up. Fucked up more than anything else could do. Tonight he’ll go to bed and think he smells Logan on the sheets. And he wont feel relief, he’ll feel disappointment even as his stomach tightens with panic. 

Maybe the fear and the need will get all mixed up and Jared wont be able to tell which is which anymore. Maybe he’ll want the pain as much as he wants the settled sense of rightness when Logan is near. And it’s been so long, so long since . . .

“Jared? You with us?” Dr. Banner asks in her deep, smooth voice.

 _I don’t know._ “Yes.”

“Alright, now that I’ve had a chance to talk to you, as well as Jensen, I’m going to explain to you exactly what is going on, and then it’s decision time.”

Jared nods, and works to focus. 

Dr. Banner explains everything. She says what’s happening to them, to Jensen, is very, very common in broken matings. She says most medical doctors don’t want to deal with it because of the huge liability. 

She says Jared and Jensen need to decide what they are going to do, soon. 

“Jared, you’re probably feeling a lot of conflicting emotions. Right now your default is going to be to want to return to Alpha Logan. But that’s just biology. I know you know that, so we’re going to discuss how to help you override that, so you can make the best decisions, okay?”

What is he supposed to say to that? “Yeah, okay.”

Jensen is moving again, half rising from the couch. “What . . . decisions? I thought . . .”

“Mating will be very traumatic, both physically and emotionally. Jared has to be sure that’s the route he wants to take.” Dr. Banner looks at Jared. “As sure as you can be.

Halfway through Dr. Banner laying out Jared’s options, Jensen jumps up and walks into the kitchen. Three minutes later something shatters and Jensen swears loudly.

Dr. Banner keeps right on talking, completely focused on Jared, but Jared has a hard time listening with the anger vibrating from the kitchen. 

By the time Jensen returns, dishcloth wrapped around one hand, Jared’s future has been laid out in possibilities. Return to Logan. Leave Jensen and get protective custody that would attempt to keep him from returning to Logan, but only as long as Logan was facing criminal charges. If he was acquitted, Logan could come and take Jared away, regardless. Or, third option, stay and mate with Jensen, which came with a dozen possible negatives. 

Now it’s past ten at night, and Jensen is still outside on the deck. He didn’t eat dinner, but he made sure Jared did. Jared’s flipping through the DVD collection while he watches through the window where Jensen is smoking his seventh cigarette. So Jensen is a smoker. Jared wouldn’t have caught that. The house doesn’t smell like smoke, there are no ashtrays. 

Dr. Banner told him to get to know his husband. Go through the house, find out what old Jared thought of Jensen. Read the notes, look at the pictures, fill in those gaping, ugly holes with everything Jensen used to be to Jared. 

There’s not a lot to go through in the main floor rooms, and none of it’s new to Jared – old grocery lists, mugs with movie quotes and crude jokes, a massive DVD collection of sci-fi and action movies. He’s still avoiding the one room he knows he has to look through. 

Jensen finishes his cigarette, all the way down to the filter, grinds it out on the railing, right on the dark mark the other six have made.

He lights up another, and Jared turns away, walks upstairs.

Inside the master bedroom, Jared closes the door and flicks on the overhead light. The bed clothes are stripped and piled at the foot of the mattress, the dresser tops both bare. Books are shoved in the shelf sideways, on top of each other. 

This is Jared’s room, and he remembers it perfectly, but not at all. That’s Jensen’s cologne he smells. There are shoes that would never fit Jared lying in front of the closet. Nothing is what he remembers. 

Jared starts pulling books off the shelf, setting them back upright. The closet has someone else’s clothes, the bathroom has Jensen’s razor and hair gel and toothbrush, but the books are something Jared remembers.

There’s an unwieldy soft-cover midway down that doesn’t fit on the shelf. It’s not meant for a bookcase, but for a coffee table, one of those books you have but never bother to open. Jared flips it over, glances at the cover. 

Jensen, naked and sprawled on rumpled sheets, looks back at him. 

Jared tries to take a breath and exhale at the same time, chokes on nothing but air. He drags his eyes away from Jensen’s perfectly rounded ass and opens the book.

Oh.

The copyright page has only one short line: _2011, JP Photography_. 

This is his book. 

Jared turns back to the cover, takes a second look. If he hadn’t been so fixed on naked-Jensen, he would have immediately recognized the photo was taken right here in this bedroom.

Jared eases down to the floor, settles the book across his knees, flips through the first three pages. Different poses and settings, all of Jensen. Jared doesn’t remember taking these photos, but he knows each location, can tell the lights he used, even the camera. 

Jared turns the page and stops. 

Jensen’s in the kitchen, leaning back against the island counter, one hand braced on the marble top, the other holding a cup of coffee with a perfect curl of steam. Everything is bathed in golden sunlight, edging Jensen’s profile, catching on his lowered lashes, on the tips of his mussed hair. 

He has his head tilted back, his eye half closed, body relaxed into the arc of his spine, the slope of his bare chest and stomach. A line of fair hair runs down from his navel, disappears into jeans unbuttoned at the fly, riding low enough to show the top curve of his ass. 

It’s a fantastic shot, and the photographer in Jared approves, but he’s flushed all over with a heat that has nothing to do with angle and lighting.

If those jeans were just two inches lower . . . 

Jared ignores it, lets the slow arousal slide in under the skin as he turns the page. 

The next picture is Jensen astride a Suzuki Hayabusa, and there’s something there that rings in Jared’s head. He knows that bike. 

He should know that body, too, but it’s new in a way that enthralls. Or maybe it was always like this. 

Jensen’s wearing gray boxer briefs and black biker boots, unlaced. He’s looking right at the camera, mouth open, upper lip lifted in a smirk, the tip of his tongue pressed to the even, white line of his teeth. 

Everything about the picture breathes sex. Jared’s can’t look away from muscular thighs spread wide, sinewy forearms, the obvious line of Jensen’s cock through gray cotton. 

“Fuck,” Jared groans. He’s fully hard now. Keeping his hands away from his dick practically has him writhing on the floor. God, what would Jensen look like humping that bike, just rubbing himself off on the leather seat. 

There’s a sharp pain in Jared’s belly, lancing from hipbone to hipbone, as muscles clench and lock up. It doesn’t matter that Jared’s skin is warm with honest attraction to what he’s looking at, his body wont let him take it any further.

It’s a sick mix of pleasure and pain, Jared’s cock still hard, tenting his sweats, while his body shuts down, following biology loyal only to its Alpha. 

“Shit - fucking shit,” Jared groans, shoving the coffee table pornography away as he rolls to the floor, curling around his stomach, keeping his hands well away from his throbbing erection. 

He lays with his eyes closed, pants through ten minutes of slowly decreasing spasms, till he’s limp and shaking, skin slick with cold sweat. 

The house is an empty kind of quiet when Jared leaves the master bedroom and stumbles to the guest room. He crawls under the blankets, pulls them over his head to block the light, tries to shut his thoughts down. Log off, hit the power button.

This is how it’s going to be for the rest of his life, his body denying him the choice. As long as Logan is alive, Jared’s body is going to fight to stay true to the Alpha that raped it into submission. 

That’s it. That’s all there is. Logan or nothing. 

Jared bites his tongue, keeps adding pressure till the pain screams and blood floods his mouth.

Swallow. Breathe. Breathe.

This is not where he ends. 

If Chris and Jensen had never come for him, there were razors in the shower, there were forks and electrical cords. But fuck that, he’s home now. Jensen smokes and apologizes and watches him with bloodshot eyes, but Jared is home. 

It doesn’t have to be Logan or nothing. Logan or a bottle of pills, Logan or a bathtub of cold water.

“My name is Jared,” Jared says to the silence. “My name is Jared.”

It’s a splinter under Jared’s skin, painfully present even through the smothering weight of Logan, but for the next twenty-six hours, nothing changes. 

Jensen stays away like Jared’s going to infect him with something, but he watches – from a doorway, the top of the stairs, the next room over – as Jared takes his meds, eats at least one meal a day. No one mentions Jared’s skipped doctors appointments. 

Jared is pretty sure Jensen also stays in contact with Dr. Banner, but when she calls to talk to him the morning after their video chat, he doesn’t ask and she doesn’t say. Instead they talk about him. 

“Do you think you and Jensen were happy?” Dr. Banner asks.

Jared hesitates, sifting through words. 

The photo book was just the kind of thing he’d want to do with a lover, but the restless, angry Jensen he knows isn’t the guy in those pictures. The hours Jared must have spent with Jensen half-naked in front of his camera, Jensen smirking, flirting, making it look like foreplay. 

Those guys, the Jared and Jensen who had a photo book of nudes in their bedroom, who threw their shoes together in a pile by the door, and owned more bad action movies than was healthy – they were happy.

They are people Jared doesn’t even know anymore. How much of Jared disappeared along with Jensen?

“It’s not going to be like that again even if. . . I’m not ever getting that back, am I.”

“No,” Dr. Banner says. “You wont regain previous memories of Jensen. But I think you could be very successful in creating a new relationship. Different doesn’t have to mean less.”

The empty, unknown holes in Jared’s mind ache. _I don’t know what different is_.

Jensen is sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, drinking Crown Royal when Jared comes down to get a glass of water. Jared stands at the refrigerator longer than necessary, half hoping Jensen will say something, half hoping he wont. 

When he pours another glass, Jared goes back upstairs.

The air is heavy and stale. Jared thinks he can smell Logan. There’s blood on his sheets.

He pulls the blankets off the guest bed – and why the fuck does he have to sleep here while Jensen sleeps in Jared’s bed, Jared’s room?

Jared stands, blankets balled in his hands, mouth hot and sore. He’s angry, and it feels good. It’s something that isn’t fear or dread or emptiness. 

He drops the blankets, kicks them against the wall, and lets anger make its own choice.

Insanity is a kind of death, but at least he can go out with his body and mind washed clean of Logan.

**  
_\- Jensen -_  
**

 

Jensen’s drunk, and he plans on getting a whole hell of a lot drunker before morning. All afternoon, all day, he’s carefully kept his eyes off Jared, maintained a ten foot distance at all times.  
It’s like being caged and baited.

When Dr. Banner called that afternoon, she suggested Jensen contact the local police, explain his situation. 

“If they need a doctor’s note, give them my number,” she said. “I’ll ask them to do regular check-ins.”

Yeah, the fuck they will. No one was coming here, in Jensen’s house, near Jensen’s Omega. This is Jensen’s problem to take care of. 

There’s no formula for this, and Jensen doesn’t need a therapist. Dr. Banner qualifies every fucking thing she says with caution. Look where caution leaves Jensen, leaves him and Jared? 

The bottle’s a third empty, and Jensen wants to fuck something up, hear something break. Stupid to be drinking now, really goddamn stupid.

There’s a soft noise from the kitchen doorway.

Jensen looks up and Jared’s right there, half shadow like one of his black and white photographs. Atmospheric, he called it once.

“I need him out of my head.” Jared sounds as rough as Jensen feels.

Jared shouldn’t be here, that’s not the plan. 

No, it’s exactly the plan, fuck all the rest of what Jensen promised himself yesterday, over and over, so he wouldn’t forget. 

Jensen doesn’t move, locks his shivering muscles into the chair. “What does that mean, Jared.”

The problem wasn’t forgetting. Jensen remembers every single word, he just doesn’t care. There’s only one answer he’s going to accept now.

“I need . . . Logan . . . out of my head.” Jared takes a deep, shaky breath. “I d-don’t care anymore, I just need him gone.”

Yes, yes, fuck yes. Jensen is lunging out of his chair before he even thinks about standing. His half-full glass tips, spills, rolls across the table. 

He has his hands on Jared – it’s something new and strange and still so familiar. Jared’s shaking, tremors vibrating through him in short bursts, and Jensen pulls him forward to test how much Jared will give. Habit wants to comfort, but Jensen needs to dominate, and fear is a rich flavor in submission. Jared asked for this, he asked, and that has to be enough, has to be everything.

Jared comes willingly when Jensen leads him upstairs. Inside their bedroom, he guides Jared over to the bare mattress, pushes him down. Jared collapses, stiff limbs folding under the pressure like a card table. 

“Don’t you fucking move,” Jensen whispers. He strips down his jeans and boxers, crawls out of them, up over Jared, peeling off his t-shirt as he goes. The second it hits the floor he’s yanking at Jared’s sweat pants, getting no help – it’s a silent wrestling match, Jared’s offense all in height and length and stiff limbs. Jensen doesn’t bother with the shirt, just grabs it by the collar and rips, jerking Jared half sitting with the force. 

“Turn over – turn the fuck over.” Jensen’s so close to something he knows he shouldn’t want, and all that part of him can do is plead, _don’t fight, Jared. Don’t you dare fight this_.

Jared’s breathing in sharp gasps, but he isn’t fighting. He’s rolling face down on the bare mattress, moving weakly, like his arms and legs have gone boneless. There are fading bruises over Jared’s narrow hips, along his ribs. Finger-wide lines in yellow and lavender stripe his thighs, just above the knee. Another Alpha’s marks.

Jensen sets his hand between Jared’s shoulders and shoves. “Stay down.” He puts in his voice the violence he wont put in his hands that want to reach inside Jared and rip out all there is that isn’t Jensen, like removing foreign matter from an infected wound.

He tugs at Jared’s hips. “Knees,” he rasps, digging fingers between rids so close under soft skin. If he was determined, Jensen could break them with this grip.

Jared slides back, spreads his thighs, lets Jensen pull his hips up, putting his ass on display. There are muscles contracting hard all along his abdomen, rippling tremors that set Jared’s whole body shaking, locked up hard as rock. Jensen runs a thumb down the crease of Jared’s ass; everything is clenched impossibly tight. It’s hard to tell how much is Jared and how much is Jared’s body, acting all on its own, but right now Jensen doesn’t even care. There’s only one way this is going. 

He has his hard cock in one hand, laying new bruises on Jared’s hip with the other, when Jared makes a strained noise and flinches away, pushing off the bed from his elbows.

 _Too fucking late._ Jensen has his hand on Jared’s neck, fingers digging into his carotid sinus. 

“Just stay the fuck still, please just . . .” Jensen says. He couldn’t stop now even if he wanted to, and god, does he not want to. Jared’s struggle are weak, and maybe he’s losing consciousness (please just let him lose consciousness) but Jensen keeps on the pressure as he uses fingers to force room for his cock. Jared vise-tight, and it’s going to hurt both of them, but Jensen’s so fucking hard, all the lust and anger he’s been nursing is being hooked and drug up and out. 

When he’s finally in, he can’t even thrust, just braces his legs wide and rocks hard against Jared’s loose body. Twice and Jensen’s screaming and coming, his knot swelling against the painful grip.  
It doesn’t feel like completion, but the razor-edge of compulsion is dulled and he can unlock his fingers from Jared’s neck, run a shaky hand down Jared’s hot, sweat-slick back. 

“Jare,” Jensen croaks. “Jared.”

Jared’s not moving, but his labored breathing is loud in the raw silence. Muscles twitch under Jensen’s hands, clench around his cock. Gracelessly, he pulls Jared against his chest and collapses to the side, legs twisted, one arm pinned to the bed. 

They’ve lain together like this more times than Jensen could count, loose-limbed and tumbled together, but it could be a plastic doll he’s holding for all the connection he feels. The heat and ache, the smell of sweat and Jared’s shampoo – a thin disguise stretched over a prosthetic, plastic and fabric where a living limb should be.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

By the third knotting, everything is hotter, wetter (everything tinted red with Jared’s blood, but Jensen wont look to see). There’s a sick, needy energy driving him; he’s holding out long past what he’d be able without some cell-jacking syndrome running his body, but underneath he’s tired, aching to his bones. 

Sometime after the light around the curtains turns to gray-white, Jared starts talking, words spilling out, slurred with moans and whimpers. When Jensen makes out the third _don’t_ , he covers Jared’s mouth, cups his hand over dry lips and hot breath.

“Jared, you gotta shut up. I need you to stop talking.”

His body knows what comes after, and the hollow swimming in his chest tells him it’s more than physical. If Jared asks him to stop just one more goddamned time, Jensen is going to rip his own face off. 

He takes his hand off Jared’s mouth, and everything is quiet for sixteen seconds. Then Jared whispers something that might be “Logan” and Jensen has the remains of Jared’s shirt balled up, forcing it into Jared’s unresisting mouth before the word can be repeated.

“You gotta stop or I’m gonna fucking lose it, I swear I . . .” Jensen’s throat closes up, fills up. He grabs Jared’s shoulder, pulls him in till skin and hair blur where Jensen presses his forehead.

“I’m sorry, I’m so f-fucking sorry, so sorry,” he sobs against Jared’s skin. 

This must be the drop from crazy-killer-Alpha high, because the words wont stop, the tears keep running. Jensen sets his teeth on Jared’s shoulder, just hard enough to dent the skin, and holds till his chest stops heaving and the leg thrown over Jared’s hip isn’t shaking and jumping. 

This is it, this is all there is. No revelation, no return of what’s been lost. They start from where they are right now, lying like strangers tied together on a bloody mattress.

**  
_\- Jared -_  
**

 

It’s every bit as painful as Jared remembers, and Logan is there for every second of it. Jared’s almost glad when he feels Jensen’s fingers on his neck. Unconsciousness would be best; nothing Jared’s doing now is in his control. He tries not to fight when black static blurs the edges of his vision. It’s just anesthesia for the amputation. 

Jared comes back to awareness when Jensen hauls him upright. The room is filled with pale, natural light, and the last thing Jared remembers is dark lit from the hallway. A week might have passed for all he knows, but the pain throbs new and sharp, and the cold mattress he’s sitting on is still wet.

“Can you stand at all?” Jensen’s tugging Jared’s arm around his own neck, pulling him to his feet. “C’mon, man, try.”

Jared’s feet must have been switched sometime in that time-warp. He staggers into Jensen, feels friction and cloth. Jensen has his jeans back on, and Jared’s wearing sweat pants again. What to make of that.

Jensen grunts, catches Jared around the chest. “Can’t carry you, you gotta walk.”

They stumble out into the hall, and Jared realizes they are headed to the guest room. Jensen drapes Jared over his shoulder, freeing one hand to open the door, and Jared leans with his face pressed against Jensen’s neck, long shuddering breaths taking in the smell of stress-sweat. 

The guest room curtains are open, sunlight sharp and unwelcome. Jensen tilts Jared over onto the bed, drops him to the mattress, and goes to cover the windows. He comes back and stands over the bed, watching Jared. 

“I’ll go get something for . . . I’ll go get your meds.” Jensen’s voice shakes. 

Jared watches Jensen’s bare back moving away. He’s walking strangely, like he’s too aware of his arms and legs. There’s probably a name for that, like when you are so aware of your tongue, you end up choking on it.

 _Logan_. 

“You need cuffs ‘r somethin’.”

Jensen stops halfway into the hall, turns. “What?”

Jared licks his lips, works his stiff jaw. Words and thoughts aren’t lining up like they should. “Something to lock me down, might try to leave. Sorry, don’t want . . . probably can’t stop it, so you should –” 

Jensen is staring at Jared’s mouth, eyes bright with something that looks like guilt. “Right. I got it.”

Jared breathes out, closes his eyes.

“Are you . . . are you good while I grab something, get your meds? Not gonna take off the second I’m out of sight?”

The bed under Jared is tilting with exhaustion induced vertigo. “Not yet,” he mumbles. “ ‘s fine.”

Jared can’t tell when Jensen leaves, can’t tell when he returns, but a brushing touch on his shoulder snaps him back to stale air and a warm body too close. 

Jensen stands back, lets Jared struggle up to half-sitting on his own before he hands him a glass of orange juice, pain medication and antibiotics. 

Jared drinks it all down through the stinging of his bruised throat. He rattles the glass against the night stand as he sets it down, and looks up, following the movement of Jensen’s hands. Sturdy fingers, short nails, scraped knuckles, turning over and over a pair of black and purple padded handcuffs. Jared doesn’t recognize them at all. They must be Jensen’s.

Jensen stops moving, dangles them off two fingers. “Left or right.”

Jared’s left wrist itches with phantom sensation, looking for the pressure of a cuff. The fantasy of Logan’s fingers, so different from Jensen’s, snapping the handcuffs on is a craving in the pit of Jared’s stomach. He wants to say left, so he says, “Right.”

Jensen nods, eyes focused on the cuffs as he reaches for Jared’s wrist. Jared lets him.

Every second Jared spent with Logan was confusion. The absence of Jensen ripped holes through everything. There were whole weeks that didn’t make sense without Jensen for context.

The memories are still gone, things Jared will never know, sport bikes and fucking purple fetish handcuffs, but the shape of Jensen’s mouth and the line of his shoulders is back in place, like a photo for reference. Jared knows it, even when he doesn’t know anything at all. 

He’s handcuffed to a bed, riding the edge of pain that the Ibuprofen and Vicodin doesn’t kill, panic a dammed river waiting to flood him, but he asked for it. Jared remembers that, even if he can’t remember why. 

He asked for this, and he knows he used to love a man called Jensen. 

It’s what Jared digs into when he wakes to his own voice calling for Logan, wakes to Jensen hovering over him, all hot, naked skin in the dark. Jared screams even while he bites through the flesh of his inner cheek to stay silent because he asked for this when he was saner. Maybe the sanest he’ll ever be again; it feels like his mind is being skinned with a hot knife.

And the worst of it is (the best of it is), more and more of Logan comes away with each wet, red slice.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long process, and I thank you all for commenting and letting me know you were waiting for the next piece. It's what kept me writing, truly. I hope the conclusion to this story is worth the wait, and I look forward to your thoughts. 
> 
> I've updated the tags & warnings, so refer to those for chapter content.

IT starts four days, eight hours, and so many minutes after _that night_. Jensen’s lying in the dark, just for a moment to catch his breath before he leaves Jared alone on damp sheets, and behind him Jared flinches, starts upright in bed.

“Why am I here?” Jared’s voice is raw, panicked.

Jensen turns slowly. “Jared? What’s wrong?”

Jared’s streetlight silhouette twitches away from Jensen. “Are you . . . did you bring me here?”

Alarms start shrilling in Jensen’s head, sharp electric jolts tripping the rhythm of his heart, prickling over his skin. “Me and Chris brought you here. Brought you home. Do you remember?”

Jared’s breathing is fast and loud. “No . . . no. I was on a boat. Someone . . . I was tied up on a boat. Why am I here?”

Jensen’s throat seizes up, strangles words that don’t answer anything. No. No, fuck this, this cannot be happening. Thirty minutes ago, Jared was fine. He was _fine._

_And then you fucked him, fucked him right over the edge._

“Jared, hey, you’re safe here, you’re home. This is your home, okay?” Jensen’s voice is shaking, the furthest thing from soothing, and Jared just slides further away, tugging the sheets tight around Jensen’s legs.

This is it. This is the price he’s not prepared to pay. If Jared can’t remember the shithead who bought and raped him, he’s going to cast Jensen in that role.

Jared has one leg off the bed, ready to make a break for it, fuck everything up, and Jensen barks, “Jared!”

Jared freezes, body fixed mid-motion.

The handcuffs Jensen bought last year, his first contribution to Jared’s kinky toy collection, are still hanging from the headboard. Before he can’t think it over, Jensen lunges across the bed and grabs Jared’s arm, slamming it against the solid wood, grinding down as he fumbles the cuff around Jared’s wrist and snaps it shut. He’s panting like he’s run three miles, already backing off before he realizes Jared hasn’t moved an inch, hasn’t offered any resistance.

A sinkhole opens in Jensen’s gut and he can’t breathe. “Jared, it’s just for . . . you asked me to.”

Jared is all brittle, rigid lines, ready to take a fist, watching Jensen in the dark. The cuffs rattle against the headboard. Jared’s shaking.

“You fucking asked me!” Jensen shouts. It’s raw, insane, and Jared flinches with the noise.

Jensen fights his way free of the clinging sheet, stumbles into the hall. He trips on the first stair down, takes the next four in a tumble till he catches the railing and hauls up short. He has some vague idea he needs to call Dr. Banner, but he’s in the kitchen before he remembers his phone is upstairs. He grabs for the land-line, the cordless phone slipping from numb fingers, spinning across the counter top.

They warned him about this, they all did. Jared’s mind is coming apart, and it’s Jensen’s fault, but there’s not a single fucking thing he can do.

Pain flares in Jensen’s chest and everything blanks out. He’s on the floor, gasping on dead air, his whole left side has gone numb and useless. Is he having a fucking heart attack? What a fucking irony. And Jared’s upstair handcuffed to the bed. No, he can’t die now, someone needs to take care of . . .

The dogs are whining in their kennels. The refrigerator starts up with a click. The tile floor is ice against Jensen’s bare skin. He blinks and twitches, arms and legs sluggish and uncontrolled. What the hell just happened? Jensen swallows, almost expecting sour whiskey taste.

Jared. Pain. Phone.

He needs to call Dr. Banner, but he can’t do more than to slide across the floor. When his back bumps against the lower cupboards, he stops trying.

After fifteen minutes of slowly decreasing pain, Jensen realizes he didn’t even think to call emergency assistance. No reason to now. Compared to the constant crisis his life has become, a possible heart attack doesn’t seem that important. What even would, now? Everything else has been trimmed away, leaving only Jared.

Curled on the floor, watching the sickly light through the glass door, Jensen lets his mind slide into grooves, deep and smooth. Every day since Jared’s kidnaping has been an isolated stretch of time, futureless, a trial to be survived in the moment. There’s only so much room in the mind for pain and horror, and every day it just seems to get worse.

But he knew this was coming. With odds like his and Jared’s, it was nearly inevitable.

Jensen breathes in, feels the pinch in his lungs. He knew what would happen if he mated with Jared, and yet it didn’t stop him. Go back now, and it still wouldn’t stop him. It wasn’t a fucking choice, there is no choice, just pain. It’s not unfair, it’s too far beyond rules or expectations to be unfair. It’s living death, only death would be kind, it offers an end.

It’s a tourniquet. A safety net. It’s always been there, in Jensen’s subconscious, waiting till there is nothing else left.

Jensen can’t scream, can’t even breathe properly. He slams his head against the baseboard, the throb of pain another flare of red, lighting up the map of his bones.

Jensen doesn’t move till the shaking and nausea ease off. It’s three a.m. by the wall clock. He holds the phone in his hands, sits on the floor and waits.

Sunrise happens behind a film of clouds.

At six a.m., Jensen calls Melissa Banner. She tells him to consider taking Jared to the hospital.

“Just until he’s more stable. In this state of mind, he may cause himself harm, and that’s not something you should try and handle on your own.”

Jensen hangs up on her mid-sentence, then unplugs the phone. His left arm is still aching with a strange, cold ache. He ignores it and brews coffee.

At six thirty-nine, Jensen imagines the hour hand sliding around, and around, and he doesn’t set any deadline, doesn’t make any plans, but a tiny part of his mind says, _give it twenty-four hours. Just twenty-four hours; all the options will still be there._

He works hard not to follow that thought any further, not picture how he will do it, (something painless, something to take them both at once), pulls his mind away like a physical movement.

Jensen calls the dogs even though they are still kenneled, just to hear something in the smothering silence. He drowns his mind in mundane things as he lets the animals out and fills their food dishes. When he can’t avoid it any longer, he goes upstairs.

Jared’s slumped against the headboard, sweat-matted hair tangled over his forehead, eyes bleary as he tracks Jensen’s progress into the room. “Gonna let me out of these so I can take a piss?”

Jensen looks Jared over, slow hope blooming in his chest. “You know where you are? You know who I am?”

“Jensen Ackles,” Jared mumbles. “Guy witha awful temp’r.”

Relief pours cold over Jensen’s skin, leaves him swaying where he stands. “Oh, thank fuck.” Jensen runs a shaking hand over his face, breathes deep. It’s a reprieve. Jared calm and talking for however long it lasts. _Please let this last._

He unlocks the cuffs with clumsy fingers, offers by gesture of hands to help Jared up, but Jared shakes his head.

“I got it,” he says, and struggles upright, stumbles his way to the bathroom.

Jensen’s feeling a little shaky, cold and unsteady. Any second something could upset this new balance. Anything he does or says - or doesn’t; it’s a game of Minefield, and Jared’s head is the bomb.

**  
_\- Jared -_  
**

Probably the only reason Jared isn’t in a coma with septic shock is the massive amount of antibiotics he’s been ingesting. He knows his body is seriously fucked up, in constant pain even with the medication, so when Jensen tells him he has a doctor’s appointment the next day, Jared doesn’t argue.

But in spite of the physical discomfort, he doesn’t actually feel he’s that badly off. Things are out of place, memories don’t line up, and Jared can feel the holes, but the edges are soft like torn felt. Whatever was there is now gone completely; Jared finds that comforting, and he doesn’t question it. The memory of what made him ask Jensen for a mating is gone, but the mind-numbing anxiety and desperation he felt at the time - that Jared can still recall, and he knows he made the right decision. He feels safe in his own head for the first time since . . . since he can remember, maybe.

Jensen doesn’t seem to agree. He watches Jared with fear and guilt bleeding from every pore, only touches him in bed, by turns hesitant and roughly perfunctory.

The morning of his doctor’s appointment, Jared wakes up sitting on the floor, back against the bed, one arm wrenched up over his head, wrist still secured by the cuffs. Jensen is crouched across the room, hands out in a conciliatory gesture. He looks terrified.

“Jare . . . Jared? You back? Hey, you with me?” Jensen’s voice shakes.

_I’m here,_ Jared tries to say, but it comes out as a choked cough, sharp as glass in his throat, and he whimpers with the pain.

“Let me get you some water. You okay? Just nod.”

Jared nods and Jensen stumbles up, leaves the room with one last glance.

He doesn’t talk, doesn’t even really look at Jared, and eventually they both end up downstairs, Jared’s exhausted from just a bath, a change of clothes, and a few swallows of breakfast. Jensen’s in the kitchen, doing nothing, because Jared is out on the couch and they never seem to occupy the same room if Jensen can help it.

When Jensen passes the doorway, close enough that Jared’s hoarse voice can carry, Jared says, “Hey.”

Jensen stops, like it’s the last think he wants to do. “Hey. You need something?” he says to the wall.

“Can we talk?”

Jensen crosses the room and slowly sinks to the seat opposite Jared. “Okay. What about?”

“Is this not what you wanted?”

Jensen looks directly at Jared. “What?”

“Mating. Did you . . . do you not want it?” _Because it’s a little late for that, now._

Jensen rubs a hand down his thigh, glancing at Jared, then away. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you act like it.”

Jensen laughs, a painful sound, shakes his head. “This is fucked up.”

Jared doesn’t say anything. It’s beyond fucked up, but that isn’t the point. For all Jared remembers, he’s lived the past four years alone. Jensen’s two weeks of strange, and a house full of ghosts, but now he’s all Jared has.

_Alpha,_ Jared’s brain supplies.

Jensen stares at the carpet. “This isn’t . . . ”

“What?” Jared asks, almost whispers. He’s that hoarse.

Jensen makes a fist, bounces it off his knee. “You know how you think shit can’t get worse, because you honestly can’t think of anything worse? And then it does?”

Jared nods. _No, because I can’t actually remember it,_ he thinks.

“Yeah, I learned that lesson.”

Jared’s head feels too heavy. He’s not alert enough to tease apart the tangle of Jensen’s words. “What lesson,” he says.

“Jared, I thought . . . we didn’t make it better. This isn’t better, it’s like . . .”

Jared waits, but Jensen doesn’t finish.

“Jensen,” he says, hears the deadness in his own voice. “What do you want?” It’s half compulsion ( _Alpha, Alpha, Alpha,_ his body is singing) half honest need. He’s better, he knows he is. He has to be. This is better.

“I don’t know,” Jensen says, voice so soft. “God, Jare, I don’t know.”

“I need you figure it out,” Jared says.

They don’t say anymore after that, but Jensen doesn’t leave, for the first time in days voluntarily staying close.

Jared goes to his appointment. When Dr. Tolbert tries to check him into a room, Jensen gets loud and aggressive. In the end, Jared goes home with new prescriptions and strict orders to remain in bed.

It happens for the first time two days later. Jared’s struggling to peel off the top off a cup of raspberry yogurt, frustration mounting, when it hits him out of nowhere. The _crinkle pop_ of the foil is strange and loud; anxiety is a knife sliding between his ribs. His lungs are too tight and the kitchen counter seems much lower than it should be when he leans against it.

Jared sets the yogurt down, weakly pushes it away. His body feels like it’s shaking apart, dread dissolving his stomach and leaking thick and hot up his throat. He has to get out of here.  
But instead of running - he can’t run, he can’t even move - Jared gasps, “Jensen?”

It doesn’t come out right, hardly even sounds like a word, but it works.

Jensen’s hands are warm on Jared’s skin, cradling his face.

There’s a rushing sound filling Jared’s head.

“Hey, calm down. Breathe, Jared.”

Then Jared’s sitting on the floor, cold and numb and sick. Jensen’s crouching in front of him, one hand on his chest, one hand holding Jared’s head, fingers gentle in his hair.

Jared feels like he’s been gutted - utterly desolate, and Jensen’s touch is the only thing that’s real. It’s reaction that makes him tip forward, fall into Jensen’s arms, cling to his solid body.

“Jared? You’re kind of freaking me out,” Jensen says into Jared’s hair.

Jared’s fingers are weak as a baby’s, but he wraps them around handfuls of Jensen’s t-shirt and doesn’t move. After a moment Jensen relaxes, and his arms tighten around Jared’s back.

“Okay. Okay, you’re okay.” Jensen’s voice is just a whisper. “Whatever you need . . . you’re okay, Jared.”

They sit on the kitchen floor for a long time.

Later, it’s hard to recall anything at all that happened, except for Jensen’s hands and Jensen’s scent and JensenJensenJensen. As much as he shouldn’t be, Jared’s honestly okay with that. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Or, in this case, sanity.

When Jensen comes to his room that night and stands in the doorway, a faint silhouette, Jared slides his arm across the sheet, palm up, fingers open. Jensen only hesitates for a second before he’s joining Jared on the bed.

After, When Jensen’s rolling over to get up, to leave, Jared says, “Stay.”

He doesn’t really know what he’s asking for, but this is what he chose, and this is what he has now. So he’s going to make it work.

Jensen’s breathing is too fast, his back still to Jared, but he stays.

That night Jared dreams he meets Jensen in a mall. Everything is decorated for Christmas, white lights and red and gold. Jensen’s crossing the court, carrying a bag from _Lindt_ and when he sees Jared he grins.

“I was just about to call you. Where’ve you been?”

Jared opens his mouth to reply, but Jensen keeps on walking right past him, and when Jared turns, Jensen is grabbing the arm of someone who looks like Jared - same body, hair too long and in his face, obscuring it from view.

Jensen’s smiling in profile as he pulls the fake Jared in close, lips moving against his ear, and all around them shoppers bustle and lights twinkle.

Jared’s throat is all dried up, and he needs to say something, wants to shout, “Hey, fucker!” Snap Jensen out of it, because that imposter isn’t Jared, just someone tall and faceless.

But happy clusters of teenagers and moms with strollers are blocking the way, swallowing Jensen and FakeJared up in the crowd, and Jared starts fighting his way towards them, knocking into people, dodging toddlers . . .

Jared wakes curled in a tense question mark, his body stiff and slick with cold sweat. Beside him, Jensen’s fast asleep.

Jared sits up, shivering and unsettled. The dream clings like cello-wrap, leaving a deep, hollow ache in his chest that’s making it hard to breathe. There are tears burning his eyes, hot and unexpected. He watches the rise and fall of Jensen’s ribs, the slow, soft breath of sleep.

This is what he’s been missing, what’s been making Jensen avoid eye contact, what makes him pull back. Somewhere in those lost memories of Jensen, there’s another Jared, the Jared Jensen really wants. Worse than the worst, Jensen thought he was going to get that Jared back. But obviously, that isn’t going to happen.

Jared, the Jared Jensen really wants, is gone for good.

**  
_\- Jensen -_  
**

Jared’s healing. Each day he moves easier and his skin loses the heat of constant fever. Every time he does something normal, with no sign of pain, the knot of guilty shame in Jensen’s gut eases just a bit more.

It’s everything else that isn’t healing.

Dr. Banner calls. She keeps pressing for a session with both of them. She recommends therapy from a trauma counselor, in addition. She insists that even though Jared and Jensen’s mating seems to be “one of the successful ones” recovery requires time and proper treatment.

Jensen agrees and ignores, by turns. Committing to a course of treatment is a kind of acceptance, a pledge to live out the results of the re-mating. Thinking about it makes his lungs close up and his skin burn cold. Dr. Banner says he’s suffering from a kind of PTSD.

Three days later, when Jared wants to take the dogs for a walk, Jensen snaps.

“It’s just around the block. They need some exerci – ”

“What the fuck do you think the yard is for?” Jensen shouts. He hates that he’s doing it, but he can’t seem to lock it down.

Jared looks at him with wide eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s fucking wrong, Jared. Oh, except that you want to go out there with a psycho still on the loose who – ” Jensen’s breath is gone. Shouted it all out. Forgot to breathe. Oh, fuck, he forgot how to breathe.

“Jensen? Hey, hey, you okay?”

If Jared goes out, he wont come back. Just like last time. It’s conviction. It’s fact.

Jensen’s vision goes fuzzy.

_Jared’s standing by the back door, early morning light catching the red in the hair that curls out from under his knit cap._

_“One of these days I’ll get you to come with me,” he grins at Jensen who’s sitting on the kitchen counter in his boxers, half a cup gone on his morning coffee intake._

_“Not happening. This obsession with running, it’s a sickness.”_

_Jared laughs, loud and bright. The dogs prance around his legs, tongues out, tags jingling, eager to be going._

_“Wait till you have to run for your life from a hoard of zombies.”_

_“You’d save me,” Jensen says into his coffee mug._

_Jared crowds up to Jensen’s side, pushes in for a kiss. “Fuck yeah, I would,” he says against Jensen’s lips._

Jensen comes back to himself on the couch, Jared’s hand on the back of his neck, keeping his head between his knees. He gasps and pushes up.

Jared takes his hand back, watching Jensen warily. He’s got his phone in his other hand, thumb hovering over the lit screen.

“You okay?” Jared asks after a long, heavy silence.

Jensen nods. Nods again. “Fine. Don’t call.” The very thought of EMT’s tromping through the house makes Jensen want to punch something.

“So is it catching?”

Jensen looks up. “What?”

Jared shifts off his heels to sit on the floor. “This panic thing. First me and now you.”  
Jensen closes his eyes. They are so fucked up. How can it be just a few short months ago they were settled in life, five years into a great relationship, so comfortable?

“PTSD.”

Jared is quiet.

“Dr. Banner says . . . anyway, that’s what it is.”

“Are you going to see someone?” Jared asks.

Therapy and half-fixes. This isn’t his life. He isn’t going to let it be. “I don’t know.”

Jared shifts, the sound of cloth over skin, bare feet on carpet. “We probably should. I mean, we both should.”

_That wont fix it, Jared,_ is what Jensen wants to say. _You’re fucked up for good, so that means I am to, and there’s no going back, there’s no fixing that._

It’s too cruel and bitter and _wrong._

He doesn’t say anything. After a while, Jared shuffles to standing.

“I’m going to make some dinner. Do you need anything?”

Jensen keeps his eyes closed against the headache that’s blooming. “Maybe some pain killers.”

Jared’s footsteps move into the kitchen, and Jensen listens to the clink of glass, the squeak of the cupboard door. The tap turns on. One of the dogs clicks across the kitchen floor and Jared says something to it, using that dumb voice he always does.

It’s the most normal anything has been in weeks, and Jensen doesn’t realize he’s crying till the tears start dripping. The heavy, hollow ache in his chest builds and builds. What the fuck. What the fuck is wrong with him? Jared’s the one taking care of Jensen, strong and gentle and so Jared-like that for a second it feels everything is back in place. But it’s not, never will be, so why the fuck does this imposter have to be so Jared-like when Jensen was ready to let go, to end it all. When it was just a traumatized shell of his husband, the worst come true, letting go would have been more merciful, for both their sakes.

It’s not an option he ever acknowledged, and to feel cheated now that it’s gone doesn’t make sense, just a sick, selfish, endless pain.

Jensen doesn’t hear Jared approach, doesn’t know he’s there till Jared’s pulling him into his arms, holding Jensen tight, lips brushing over his hair.

“I’m sorry. It’s okay now. We’ll be okay.”

Jared’s voice is so soft and even, just the slightest hitch to tell Jensen he’s probably crying now, too. It vibrates through his chest. “Just let go for a while. I’m gonna take care of you.”

Jensen does.

He wakes up, sometime in the early hours of the morning. He’s in his own bed, his and Jared’s bed. Beside him, Jared is fast asleep. In the shadowed room, his hair is ink-black against the pillow.

Jensen turns over so he’s facing his sleeping husband and breathes through the slow wave of pain the rolls over him. It’s both resignation and determination. Before he closes his eyes in the dawn light that’s bleeding through the curtains, it’s a promise.

**  
_\- Jared -_  
**

“We don’t have to do this,” Jensen says. He’s straddling Jared’s hips, arms braced on either side of Jared’s head, the muscles standing out in sharp relief. The warmth of his bare thighs and the weight of his cock and balls against Jared’s belly are taking up every bit of Jared’s attention. It takes him a moment to understand what Jensen means.

“Sex?”

Jensen’s face is in shadow, but his muscles twitch at the word. Discomfort bleeds from his skin, and that more than anything, the ability to sense his Alpha’s emotions, tells Jared their mating bond is whole, and healthy.

“It’s fine now, right?” Jensen says, voice quiet. “It worked so . . . we don’t have to. Not anymore.”

“Do you want to stop?” _Please don’t say yes_. Jared isn’t sure when sex with Jensen turned from painful, involuntary need, to warm comfort, a way to sooth. It feels good, even if it isn’t the rough, lust-fueled fucking Jared remembers he loved. He likes sex, of that Jared is sure. It just might take a while for his hormone soaked body to relearn that.

But he doesn’t want to stop.

“Jared . . .” Jensen sounds cautious, maybe a little sad. Guilty.

“Jensen. I like sex with you.”

Shadow draws Jensen’s jaw in soft charcoal, lighting the curve of his cheekbone. “Why?”

Jared can’t help but laugh, breathy and restless. He rocks his hips up, grinding his half-hard cock against Jensen’s ass. “Do you really have to ask? We used to fuck like bunnies.”

Jensen goes tense, and then he’s scrambling off Jared, hands frantic on Jared’s shoulders, turning him towards the weak outdoor light.

“You remember that? Jared?” The fear, the fucking _hope_ in Jensen’s voice makes Jared’s throat swell.

“No . . . just, I’ve been looking at my . . . memories, looking at them like you’re still in them.”

Jensen pulls away, settles back on the bed.

“There’s that book,” Jared says. “The one of photos I took of you. And I remember that as something I would have really liked. I know I liked sex. A lot. So . . . if I was having lots of sex it was with you.”

Jared doesn’t think he’s explaining it properly, but how do you explain something that you can’t fully understand? When he runs out of words, the silence is heavy. Jensen doesn’t move.

“Unless I was a cheating asshole,” Jared offers. And he doesn’t really believe it, but suddenly the uncertainty makes his chest a little tight. “I wasn’t an asshole, was I?”

“Fuck,” Jensen whispers. “Fuck, Jared . . .” He sounds shaky, again.

Jared reaches for him, and Jensen lunges forward, wrapping himself around Jared, tangling his fingers in his hair, pulling Jared into a kiss, fierce and needy.

Jensen’s mouth is hot and unexpected and Jared wants it more than he can remember wanting anything. They may have done this a hundred thousand times before, but Jared will never remember. Right now, it’s their first kiss.

Jensen’s hands are everywhere, touching, caressing, pressing into Jared’s skin. In-between kisses, he’s mumbling, “How are you so strong, so fucking strong and brave . . .”

Jared soaks it in, writhes against Jensen’s warm, firm body, drinks every sensation down into his empty soul.

“I love you so fucking much.” Jensen’s voice breaks and Jared opens his mouth against Jensen’s to swallow the words. There’s a million things he needs to say, but the holes in his mind have eaten the necessary vocabulary, so he just clings to Jensen’s shoulders, digs his fingers into the muscle of Jensen’s back and holds on.

The next morning, Jared hears Jensen laugh for the first time.

**  
_\- EPILOGUE -  
_** Three Weeks Later  


“Brie. And rye bread. Definitely rye bread.”

Jensen makes a face, but writes it down.

Jared takes a bite of his apple, watching Jensen across the kitchen island. “Greens olives?”

Jensen looks up from the shopping list he’s compiling. They’ve neglected normal activities like shopping, and working and even stepping out the front door - basically anything that required separation or a public appearance. Chris brought groceries by, but it didn’t matter so much because neither Jared or Jensen were really eating. But now Jared’s appetite has come back in a big way. He has seventeen pounds to gain back, and he plans to eat whatever he wants. Turns out he wants some pretty weird things.

“Green olives? Seriously?” Jensen’s pretending to be disgusted, but already Jared knows him well enough to see he’s teasing, and is actually pleased Jared is asking for food. “Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant,” Jensen says, even as he adds olives to the scrap of paper. He insisted he could remember everything, but Jared made him write it down. He really fucking needs his rye bread.

Jared shrugs. “Olives sound good.”

“Okay, then if that’s it, we’re leaving before you come up with anything else,” Jensen says, and then lingers, pretending to check he has his wallet and keys.

Jared slides off his stool, walks around the counter, right into Jensen’s personal space. Jensen looks up at him, swallows. There’s a kind of longing in his eyes, but he’s waiting for Jared to make the first move. Jared leans in and kisses his husband.

They do that now. Jensen more than Jared, though most of the time he stops halfway there, looking shocked and guilty, like he forgot himself, forgot them and how they aren’t really them. Jared chooses to believe it’s something they can get over.

Jared touches Jensen’s jaw, runs his sticky fingers up into short hair. That will piss Jensen off, but he’ll grin because Jared’s fucking with him, and that seems to really make Jensen happy.

“Gghh, Jared,” Jensen mumbles against Jared’s lips.

“Olives,” Jared whispers. “Now.”

“Demanding,” Jensen kisses Jared, “little,” he kisses him again, longer, with a bit of tongue, and whatever loving insult he was going to end with is forgotten when Jared backs up, pulling Jensen with him, bumping against the island counter, trying to fit their bodies together in search of friction.

There’s a certain dynamic to their relationship that lies just beneath the surface. Jensen knows it, but he wont tell Jared, as if telling him will force him to act a certain way. Jared’s finding it on his own, but it’s slow. The only place they are both perfectly natural is in bed.

It’s ironic. Jensen still has some hangups. Jared, too, but most of that burns off with the foreplay and by the time Jensen’s inside of Jared, two bodies folded into one, there’s nothing between them. The honestly and safety of the experience appeals to Jared as much as the orgasms, and that really means something now that his libido is coming back along with his appetite.

Jensen moans against Jared’s mouth, hands coming up to grip Jared’s hair. Jared’s elbow clips a coffee cup sitting on the island, knocking it to shatter on the floor and Jensen jumps, pulling away just as the dogs come skittering into the kitchen to see what’s happening. Jared has to wrestle them away from the sharp pieces and by the time he has them kenneled, Jensen has swept up the shards and is standing by the front door, looking like he’s about to face a firing squad.

“I guess . . . we should go.”

Jared nods. It’s the first time they’ve gone anywhere but to doctor’s appointments since Jared woke up in the hospital. Earlier than that even, but that’s the part Jared can’t remember. It’s part of their therapy. Jensen wont even call it that, but he’s willing to take the advice of Dr. Banner, at least in part.

The drive is quiet, a dead spot in the canvas of the day. Those are becoming less frequent but there are times, sometimes hours that Jensen can’t seem to speak to Jared, usually after Jared does something that reminds them both of why everything that’s wrong is wrong. Jared watches the neighborhoods pass, all familiar, dozens of memories connected to any of them, but not a single one of Jensen.

“We need beer,” Jensen says. It’s forced and pointless, beer is already on the list, just something to break the silence. It works. They have something to talk about as Jensen parks and they enter the store. They buy more than they need, but they don’t rush, and Jared looks more than one person in the eye. It’s a relief he didn’t know he needed.

“You’re going to make yourself sick if you eat half this shit,” Jensen says as they’re leaving the parking lot.

“I’m not going to eat it alone,” Jared says.

“Yeah, nice try. Did you forget what you like to eat or something?”

Jared can tell the second Jensen registers his own words. He nearly drives the car off the road and Jared is ready to grab the wheel.

Jensen straightens out, but his face is sickly pale. “I didn’t mean – ”

“No, I remember what I like,” Jared says, “but it doesn’t really sound good right now.”

Jensen swallows hard. Jared feels his tension secondhand, like a deep, cold ache. Jared wants to touch, but he isn’t sure that would help. “Dr. Banner said it’s pretty common. It’s because the hormones are unbalanced.”

Jensen’s starting to unlock, Jared’s apparent ease settling him. “That’s . . . well, that’s not good but it’s not too bad, right?”

Jared smiles. Jensen is so obsessed with him, Jared is pretty sure he wouldn’t just help Jared hide a body, he’d cut it up and then swear on a bible he’d never seen a dead man in his life.

“It’s fine. Means stuff is getting back to normal.”

Jensen’s smile is tight, but there is relief in his eyes as he turns into their driveway.

“Hey, we should take the kids for a walk,” Jared says.

Jensen glances over. “Maybe.”

Jared doesn’t push it.

They both carry in the groceries. Jared wont let Jensen do it alone. He might not be 100% yet, but he’ll never get there if all he does is sleep and eat.

He sets the bags on the counter and Jensen says, “I’ve got this.” He rubs a hands down his leg, a nervous tic Jared’s picked up on, then says, “Why don’t you get the guys their leashes, we’ll take a spin around the block.”

Jared grins. He’s tired of the house, the car, the doctor’s office. Jensen’s putting himself out to let Jared breathe free air even with Jensen right next to him. “I’ll have them ready in five.” Jensen nods, already opening the refrigerator to fill with food.

Jared snags the leashes off the coat hooks and walks back to the dogs’ kennels. “C’mon you big dummies, you’re getting some outside time so don’t . . .”

Jared’s words trail off when he catches sight of his dogs. They’re still in their crates, both sprawled on their sides, sacked out like they’re dead asleep, ribs rising and falling in slow breaths.

Jared whistles, sharp and loud, but neither dog stirs. Fear curls cold and sharp in Jared’s gut. Did he feed them something bad? Did he forget something important and seriously fuck up?

“Steve.”

“Shit!” Jared jumps and spins around at the strange voice, too close behind him.

Standing in the middle of the mudroom is a stranger. The guy’s tall, almost Jared’s height, long, blond hair pulled back, square jaw unshaven.

Jared backs away. “Who the hell are you?” There’s more happening here than Jared can grasp, his total focus filled with concern for his pets and alarm at a stranger’s appearance in his house. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to get you.” The guy steps forward and Jared takes a step back. “You think you can stay here? You’re mine now, Steve.”

“Stay away from me.”

The guy laughs, sharp and angry. He sounds unhinged. “You can come with me or I’ll drag your ass out of here.”

Before he even knows he’s going to speak or what he’s going to say, Jared shouts, “Jensen!”  
Something shatters in the kitchen. The guy half turns towards the doorway.

What happens after that is hard for Jared to recall. The police officers who question him later are suspicious that he can’t give more detail when he was in the same room, watching it all happen practically under his feet. The truth is, from the second Jensen shoots into the room, slamming into the stranger and taking him to the floor, he’s the only thing Jared sees.

He watches Jensen and the stranger tumble across the floor, snarling like animals, slamming into the walls, the dog crates. Jensen’s a beast, raging and out for blood, and Jared is frozen in place at the sight. It’s something prehistoric unfolding right there on Jared’s stone tile floor, and it’s not fear that’s sparking through his body, even with Jensen’s pain and rage screaming in his head. Two Alphas in a death match and Jared doesn’t have to acknowledge the thought to know he’s the prize.

The stranger tries to wraps his hands around Jensen’s throat, but Jensen has him by the hair and he’s rolling, slamming the guy’s head into the floor. Once, twice. The sound is lost under Jensen’s roar of rage.

They guy’s still moving, slow and uncoordinated, when Jensen drops him and gets up, stalking over to the dog’s metal food dishes knocked away from their place by the wall. He picks one up and turns back towards the stranger. The guy’s made it to one knee, blood streaming from his hair, painting half his face red. The floor is a mess.

Jensen kicks him, the toe of his boot connecting with the guy’s jaw, knocking him back to the floor. Jensen steps in and turns him over with one foot.

“You worthless piece of shit.” Jensen’s voice is low, wrecked, dark as poison. “You should have stayed away, you might have lived.”

Jared lets out a shuddering breath and Jensen’s shoulders tense, but he doesn’t turn, all his focus on the guy groaning and blinking between Jensen’s spread legs.

Jared’s shivering, so keyed up he can’t hold still. If not for the wall he’s leaning into Jared is sure he wouldn’t be standing at all. Jensen swings the bowl up and brings it down in a sharp blow. This time the sound is ear-splitting, bone and flesh and blood.

And then Jensen’s slamming the edge of the heavy metal bowl down again and again, red raining in an arc with each backstroke. Jensen’s screaming, raw and helpless, agony that can’t soothed, and Jared closes his eyes, shaking like a leaf till the screaming stops, and the only sound is Jensen’s ragged breathing.

“Jared,” Jensen whispers, and boots scrape across the floor, splash in liquid.

Jared knows what just happened, knows who’s lying dead on the floor. “Are the dogs okay?” he asks without opening his eyes.

Jensen moves, the kennels rattle. “I think so,” Jensen rasps. “They must have been tranquilized.”

“We should call the police.” Jared can feel Jensen approach and stop in front of him.

“Jared.”

Jared blinks his eyes open. Jensen’s left hand, the less bloody hand, is half raised, hovering like always, wanting to touch but unsure how much he can have. Jared’s whole life has been re-written, but it’s Jensen who lives with that loss.

Jared catches Jensen hand, brings it up to press the palm against his chest. “Thank you,” he whispers. He can’t say it, be he thinks he means “I love you”.

Jensen’s eyes widen, confused, lips parting in question, the fragility of the expression at odds with the blood splashed up his neck and jaw. Jared leans in and kisses him.

Later, much later, hours and questions and people later, Jensen curls around Jared in the dark of their bedroom. Jared runs his finger up into the short brush of Jensen’s hair. He counts the soft, warm exhales against his shoulder.

They lie there for hours, silent, facing each other skin to skin. Jared starts to drift, only brought back when Jensen says, so softly, like maybe he hopes Jared’s asleep and wont hear, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Jared feels Jensen’s chest expand against his own in a hard breath, then another, like his Alpha is fighting back tears. He runs his fingers up Jensen’s warm body to find his face, brushing over rough stubble.

“When I decided to mate with you, I didn’t know if it would work or not.”

Jensen goes still, listening.

“I don’t remember what made me decide for it, but I do know I was okay with however it turned out.”

“Jared,” Jensen whispers, and he sounds close to breaking.

Jared turns, bringing their lips inches apart. “No, you have to understand, you did save me. In every way that counts, you saved me. I don’t remember any of it, none of the pain, none of the things I was ready to kill myself to escape. It’s all gone. I can live free now.”

Breath blows warm over Jared’s mouth and he runs his thumb over Jensen’s soft lower lip before he brings their mouths together in a kiss, feeling his way in the dark.

It’s a slow gentle kiss, warming into something stronger. Jared pulls back, eyes wide in the pitch black, a dark now comforting and close.

“You saved me,” he whispers against his husband’s lips. “And now, you should make love to me.”

_END_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to add a nice porny scene in there, something sweet for all that angst, but it never seemed to quite fit. I compromised by not killing the dogs. I hope the end scenes gave enough resolution. Jared and Jensen have a ways to go before they are fully functional again, and though many things have changed forever, together they will find happiness again. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading along with me.


End file.
